Role of eyes in face perception and recognition

人脸处理是人类大脑最重要的认知功能之一，是社会认知的核心。从面部我们可以提取大量的信息，如一个人的身份，她的年龄，性别，她可能会感受到她的面部表情，或者她可能会关注什么根据她看的地方。虽然脸是一类视觉对象，但越来越多的证据表明，它们的处理方式与其他对象不同，有专门的神经网络专门用于提取的信息类型（身份、情感等）。我们似乎毫不费力地就能认出我们的朋友和家人，或者仅仅通过观察他们的面部表情就能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，而人们对这些机制的了解仍然很少。这些能力的缺陷，如在自闭症等某些疾病中看到的，或作为脑损伤的结果，导致社会互动功能失调，社会孤立和许多痛苦。了解完整大脑中这些认知过程背后的神经机制，对于理解这些能力如何在各种疾病中出错或崩溃是必要的。我的研究项目是通过眼动监测和脑电图神经记录来研究识别面部和面部表情的神经机制。短期内，我关注的是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绪表达的识别。项目1将测试我们最近开发的早期面部感知新模型，并将描述我们展示的存在于人类大脑中的神经认知眼睛区域探测器的工作特性。项目2将研究眼睛在面部识别复杂过程中的作用，而项目3将关注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这些基本的大脑过程在一些临床疾病中是如何出错的很重要，在这些疾病中，眼睛经常被回避，比如自闭症。这项基础研究将增强我们目前对面部感知和更广泛的视觉相关的大脑机制的认识，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、认知和情感的广泛领域，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，专门从事包括脑电图和眼动追踪系统在内的研究型设备的公司，市场研究公司）。

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).