A neural marker of the human face identity familiarity effect

Human adults associate different views of an identity much better for familiar than for unfamiliar faces. However, a robust and consistent neural index of this behavioral face identity familiarity effect (FIFE)—not found in non-human primate species—is lacking. Here we provide such a neural FIFE ind...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2023-09, Vol.13 (1), p.16294-16294, Article 16294
Main Authors: Yan, Xiaoqian, Volfart, Angélique, Rossion, Bruno
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/378/2649/1723
631/477/2811
Celebrities
EEG
Electroencephalography
Face
Familiarity
Fixed rates
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Pattern recognition
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:Human adults associate different views of an identity much better for familiar than for unfamiliar faces. However, a robust and consistent neural index of this behavioral face identity familiarity effect (FIFE)—not found in non-human primate species—is lacking. Here we provide such a neural FIFE index, measured implicitly and with one fixation per face. Fourteen participants viewed 70 s stimulation sequences of a large set (n = 40) of widely variable natural images of a face identity at a rate of 6 images/second (6 Hz). Different face identities appeared every 5th image (1.2 Hz). In a sequence, face images were either familiar (i.e., famous) or unfamiliar, participants performing a non-periodic task unrelated to face recognition. The face identity recognition response identified at 1.2 Hz over occipital-temporal regions in the frequency-domain electroencephalogram was 3.4 times larger for familiar than unfamiliar faces. The neural response to familiar faces—which emerged at about 180 ms following face onset—was significant in each individual but a case of prosopdysgnosia. Besides potential clinical and forensic applications to implicitly measure one’s knowledge of a face identity, these findings open new perspectives to clarify the neurofunctional source of the FIFE and understand the nature of human face identity recognition.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-023-40852-9