Role of eyes in face perception and recognition

眼睛在面部感知和识别中的作用

• 批准号: RGPIN-2017-04638
• 负责人: Itier, Roxane
• 金额: $ 2.84万
• 依托单位: University of Waterloo
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=711088
• 关键词: Role; eyes; face; perception; recognition

Face processing is one of the most important cognitive functions of the human brain and it is central to social cognition. From faces we can extract numerous information such as the identity of a person, her age, gender, what she might be feeling based on her facial expressions or what she might be attending to based on where she is looking. Although faces are a class of visual objects, accumulating evidence suggests they are processed in a specific way and differently from other objects, with dedicated neural networks specific to the type of information extracted (identity, emotion etc.). It seems effortless to be able to recognise our friends and family members, or to decipher what they could be thinking and feeling by simply looking at their facial expressions. However, these fundamental cognitive abilities rely on very complex neural mechanisms that are still poorly understood. Impairments in these abilities, as seen in certain disorders such as autism, or as the result of brain injury, lead to dysfunctional social interactions, social isolation and lots of suffering. Understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie these cognitive processes in the intact brain is necessary to understand how these abilities go awry or break down in various disorders. My research program investigates the neural mechanisms involved in recognizing faces and facial expressions using eye movement monitoring and neural recordings through electroencephalography. In the short-term, I am focusing on the central role that the eyes play in these mechanisms and whether and how focusing on the eyes can improve the recognition of face identity or the recognition of facial expression of emotion. Project 1 will test the new model of early face perception that we recently developed and will characterize the workings of the neuro-cognitive eye region detector that we showed exists in the human brain. Project 2 will investigate the role of the eyes in the complex processes involved in face recognition while Project 3 will focus on the role of features in the neural processing of facial expressions. This research is important to understand better how these fundamental brain processes go awry in several clinical disorders in which the eyes are often avoided, as in autism. This fundamental research will enhance our current knowledge of brain mechanisms related to face perception, and more broadly vision, and has important clinical implications. Students will receive a multidisciplinary training in Cognitive Neuroscience, spanning the wide fields of perception, cognition and emotion, and will gain unique skills in the use of sophisticated brain and behaviour techniques that they can transfer to industry if they do not continue in academia (e.g. companies specialized in research-oriented devices including EEG and eye-tracking systems, market research companies).

人脸加工是人脑最重要的认知功能之一，也是社会认知的核心。从面部我们可以提取大量的信息，比如一个人的身份，她的年龄，性别，她根据她的面部表情可能会有什么感觉，或者她可能会根据她看的地方关注什么。虽然人脸是一类视觉对象，但越来越多的证据表明，它们是以特定的方式处理的，与其他对象不同，有专门的神经网络来处理提取的信息类型(身份、情感等)。我们似乎可以毫不费力地辨认出我们的朋友和家人，或者通过简单地看他们的面部表情来破译他们的想法和感受。然而，这些基本的认知能力依赖于非常复杂的神经机制，这些机制仍然知之甚少。这些能力的损害，如自闭症等某些障碍或脑损伤的结果，会导致社交功能障碍、社交孤立和许多痛苦。了解完整大脑中这些认知过程的神经机制对于了解这些能力如何在各种障碍中出错或崩溃是必要的。我的研究项目使用眼动监测和脑电记录来研究识别面孔和面部表情所涉及的神经机制。在短期内，我将重点放在眼睛在这些机制中所起的核心作用，以及关注眼睛是否以及如何提高对面部身份的识别或对面部情感表达的识别。项目1将测试我们最近开发的早期面孔感知的新模型，并将描述我们展示的存在于人脑中的神经认知眼区检测器的工作原理。项目2将研究眼睛在人脸识别所涉及的复杂过程中的作用，而项目3将重点研究特征在面部表情神经处理中的作用。这项研究对于更好地理解在几种临床疾病中这些基本的大脑过程是如何出错的非常重要，在这些疾病中，眼睛经常被避开，比如自闭症。这项基础性研究将提高我们目前对与面孔知觉相关的大脑机制以及更广泛的视觉的了解，并具有重要的临床意义。学生将接受认知神经科学的多学科培训，涵盖感知、认知和情感等广泛领域，并将获得使用复杂大脑和行为技术的独特技能，如果他们不在学术界继续学习，他们可以将这些技能转移到行业中(例如，专门从事研究型设备的公司，包括脑电和眼球跟踪系统，市场研究公司)。