Neurophysiological markers of the global/local biases in face perception.

Global/local biases in the visual processing of structurally complex stimuli occur under certain conditions of the beholder. Previous experiments using hierarchical letters (large letters made of small ones) have reported a global precedence in young adults. Here, we aimed to define neurophysiological markers of a possible global/local bias during the implicit processing of new faces. We performed two ERP experiments on young adults using hierarchical/compound facial stimuli, either congruent (eyes replaced by small faces) or incongruent (objects as eyes), with peripheral small objects and faces, respectively, grafted as distracters. In Experiment 1, the face-sensitive N170/VPP was largest for regular faces and progressively decreased through congruent and incongruent hierarchical faces, evidencing disruption of the global bias. In Experiment 2, N170/VPP was similar between both hierarchical faces and a new objects condition, likely due to the visual angle increase used to prevent a global bias. Moreover, an N200-350 with maximal amplitude for incongruent faces and objects appeared in both experiments, suggesting a perceptive mismatch with a canonical face template. Experiment 2 also revealed a posterior negativity ∼220-330 msec for objects and faces, likely indicating access to known categories, as well as an object-specific late positivity that could reflect pre-semantic, visual recognition of common objects. Source reconstruction highlighted the significant involvement of ventral (predominantly right-sided) visual regions in these ERP modulations. This experimental design can be useful to detect global/local biases and several markers of face and object processing related to individual differences and neurodegenerative diseases even before they manifest overtly.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior

• Publication date

  2025-08-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.004PMID 40907235
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Effects of Inversion and Fixation Location on the Processing of Face and House Stimuli – A Mass Univariate Analysis

  2024cited by this paper
• Mass-univariate analysis of scalp ERPs reveals large effects of gaze fixation location during face processing that only weakly interact with face emotional expression

  2023cited by this paper
• Global and Local Processing of Letters and Faces: The Role of Visual Focal Attention

  2023cited by this paper
• Progressive attenuation of visual global precedence across healthy aging and Alzheimer’s disease

  2022cited by this paper
• Psychophysiological Study of the Basic and Superordinate Categorization of Objects Complicated by the Influence of the Previous Irrelevant Stimulus

  2022cited by this paper
• Impact of face outline, parafoveal feature number and feature type on early face perception in a gaze-contingent paradigm: A mass-univariate re-analysis of ERP data

  2022cited by this paper
• The N300: An Index for Predictive Coding of Complex Visual Objects and Scenes

  2020cited by this paper
• Different and common brain signals of altered neurocognitive mechanisms for unfamiliar face processing in acquired and developmental prosopagnosia.

  2020cited by this paper
• Global precedence changes by environment: A systematic review and meta-analysis on effect of perceptual field variables on global-local visual processing

  2020cited by this paper
• Understanding the role of configural processing in face emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease.

  2020cited by this paper
• The P200 predominantly reflects distance-to-norm in face space whereas the N250 reflects activation of identity-specific representations of known faces.

  2019cited by this paper
• ERP Source Analysis Guided by fMRI During Familiar Face Processing

  2019cited by this paper
• From eye to face: The impact of face outline, feature number, and feature saliency on the early neural response to faces.

  2019cited by this paper
• Extended categorization of conjunction object stimuli decreases the latency of attentional feature selection and recruits orthography-linked ERPs

  2019cited by this paper
• Investigating the Time Course of Part-Based and Holistic Processing in Face Perception

  2019cited by this paper
• Increased Early Sensitivity to Eyes in Mouthless Faces: In Support of the LIFTED Model of Early Face Processing

  2018cited by this paper
• Category learning can alter perception and its neural correlates

  2018cited by this paper
• Source Reconstruction of Brain Potentials Using Bayesian Model Averaging to Analyze Face Intra-Domain vs. Face-Occupation Cross-Domain Processing

  2018cited by this paper
• Ocular and visual disorders in Parkinson's disease: Common but frequently overlooked.

  2017cited by this paper
• Differential processing of hierarchical visual stimuli in young and older healthy adults: An event-related potentials (ERP) study.

  2016cited by this paper
• Caricature generalization benefits for faces learned with enhanced idiosyncratic shape or texture

  2016cited by this paper
• Repetition effects in human ERPs to faces.

  2016cited by this paper
• Brain Signals of Face Processing as Revealed by Event-Related Potentials

  2015cited by this paper
• A Revised Neural Framework for Face Processing.

  2015cited by this paper
• A meta-analysis and review of holistic face processing.

  2014cited by this paper
• Early sensitivity for eyes within faces: A new neuronal account of holistic and featural processing

  2014cited by this paper
• The neural signature of the own-race bias: evidence from event-related potentials.

  2014cited by this paper
• Long-term information and distributed neural activation are relevant for the "internal features advantage" in face processing: electrophysiological and source reconstruction evidence.

  2013cited by this paper
• Combined effects of inversion and feature removal on N170 responses elicited by faces and car fronts.

  2013cited by this paper
• A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception: I. Perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization.

  2012cited by this paper
• Defining face perception areas in the human brain: a large-scale factorial fMRI face localizer analysis.

  2012cited by this paper
• The faces you remember: caricaturing shape facilitates brain processes reflecting the acquisition of new face representations.

  2012cited by this paper
• Faces forming traces: Neurophysiological correlates of learning naturally distinctive and caricatured faces

  2012cited by this paper
• Species sensitivity of early face and eye processing

  2011cited by this paper
• The role of eyes in early face processing: a rapid adaptation study of the inversion effect.

  2011cited by this paper
• The N170 : understanding the time-course of face perception in the human brain

  2011cited by this paper
• External facial features modify the representation of internal facial features in the fusiform face area

  2010cited by this paper
• THE VISUAL EVOKED POTENTIAL IN MAN

  2010cited by this paper
• Standardized or simple effect size: what should be reported?

  2009cited by this paper
• The recognition potential reflects an intermediate level of visual representation.

  2009cited by this paper
• Visual processing in Alzheimer's disease: surface detail and colour fail to aid object identification.

  2009cited by this paper
• Distortions in the brain? ERP effects of caricaturing familiar and unfamiliar faces.

  2008cited by this paper
• Brain potentials and integration of external and internal features into face representations.

  2008cited by this paper
• Bayesian M/EEG source reconstruction with spatio-temporal priors

  2008cited by this paper
• Electrophysiological neural mechanisms for detection, configural analysis and recognition of faces

  2007cited by this paper
• Early Face Processing Specificity: It's in the Eyes!

  2007cited by this paper
• Face processing stages: impact of difficulty and the separation of effects.

  2006cited by this paper
• Processing the Trees and the Forest during Initial Stages of Face Perception: Electrophysiological Evidence

  2006cited by this paper
• Comparing neural correlates of configural processing in faces and objects: An ERP study of the Thatcher illusion

  2006cited by this paper
• Estimation of in vivo brain-to-skull conductivity ratio in humans.

  2006cited by this paper
• ERP components reflecting stimulus identification: contrasting the recognition potential and the early repetition effect (N250r).

  2005cited by this paper
• Face perception is mediated by a distributed cortical network.

  2005cited by this paper
• Bayesian model averaging in EEG/MEG imaging

  2004cited by this paper
• N250r: a face-selective brain response to stimulus repetitions

  2004cited by this paper
• The fusiform face area subserves face perception, not generic within-category identification

  2004cited by this paper
• Electrophysiological correlates of object categorization: back to basics.

  2004cited by this paper
• Electrophysiological and haemodynamic correlates of face perception, recognition and priming.

  2003cited by this paper
• The role of spatial attention in the processing of facial expression: An ERP study of rapid brain responses to six basic emotions

  2003cited by this paper
• Turn that frown upside down: ERP effects of thatcherization of misorientated faces.

  2003cited by this paper
• Non-spatial attentional effects on P1.

  2002cited by this paper
• Event-related brain potential evidence for a response of inferior temporal cortex to familiar face repetitions.

  2002cited by this paper
• Inversion and Contrast Polarity Reversal Affect both Encoding and Recognition Processes of Unfamiliar Faces: A Repetition Study Using ERPs

  2002cited by this paper
• Local-global processing in Alzheimer's disease: an examination of interference, inhibition and priming.

  2002cited by this paper
• Automated Anatomical Labeling of Activations in SPM Using a Macroscopic Anatomical Parcellation of the MNI MRI Single-Subject Brain

  2002cited by this paper
• Neurophysiological evidence for two processing times for visual object identification.

  2002cited by this paper
• Standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA): technical details.

  2002cited by this paper
• Unraveling mechanisms for expert object recognition: bridging brain activity and behavior.

  2002cited by this paper
• The distributed human neural system for face perception.

  2000cited by this paper
• STRUCTURAL ENCODING AND IDENTIFICATION IN FACE PROCESSING: ERP EVIDENCE FOR SEPARATE MECHANISMS

  2000cited by this paper
• Event-related brain potentials distinguish processing stages involved in face perception and recognition.

  2000cited by this paper
• The conductivity of the human skull: results of in vivo and in vitro measurements

  2000cited by this paper
• Modulation of event‐related potentials by prototypical and atypical faces

  2000cited by this paper
• The mental representations of faces and houses: Issues concerning parts and wholes

  1999cited by this paper
• Face-selective processing in human extrastriate cortex around 120 ms after stimulus onset revealed by magneto- and electroencephalography.

  1998cited by this paper
• The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception

  1997cited by this paper
• Electrophysiological Studies of Face Perception in Humans

  1996cited by this paper
• Inferotemporal cortex and object vision.

  1996cited by this paper
• A Probabilistic Atlas of the Human Brain: Theory and Rationale for Its Development: The International Consortium for Brain Mapping (ICBM)

  1995cited by this paper
• A probabilistic atlas of the human brain: theory and rationale for its development. The International Consortium for Brain Mapping (ICBM).

  1995cited by this paper
• Low resolution electromagnetic tomography: a new method for localizing electrical activity in the brain.

  1994cited by this paper
• Stimulus factors affecting the categorisation of faces and scrambled faces.

  1994cited by this paper
• Automatic 3D Intersubject Registration of MR Volumetric Data in Standardized Talairach Space

  1994cited by this paper
• Parts and Wholes in Face Recognition

  1993cited by this paper
• A Practical Bayesian Framework for Backpropagation Networks

  1992cited by this paper
• The effect of visual angle on global and local reaction times depends on the set of visual angles presented

  1990cited by this paper
• Bodamer's (1947) paper on prosopagnosia

  1990cited by this paper
• The processing of hierarchical stimuli: Effects of retinal locus, locational uncertainty, and stimulus identity

  1988cited by this paper
• Configurational Information in Face Perception

  1987cited by this paper
• The mental representation of faces: Spatial and temporal factors

  1986cited by this paper
• Does global precedence really depend on visual angle?

  1983cited by this paper
• Prosopagnosia

  1982cited by this paper
• The order of visual processing: “Top-down,” “bottom-up,” or “middle-out”

  1979cited by this paper
• Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception ☆

  1977cited by this paper
• Detecting target elements in multielement arrays: A confusability model

  1974cited by this paper
• The assessment and analysis of handedness: the Edinburgh inventory.

  1971cited by this paper
• Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences

  1969cited by this paper
• Human Brain Mapping 15:1–25(2001) � Nonparametric Permutation Tests For Functional Neuroimaging:

  year unknowncited by this paper
• Human Neuroscience

  year unknowncited by this paper
• Please Scroll down for Article Cognitive Neuropsychology Family Resemblance: Ten Family Members with Prosopagnosia and Within-class Object Agnosia

  year unknowncited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.