Natural facial motion enhances cortical responses to faces - PubMed (original) (raw)

Natural facial motion enhances cortical responses to faces

Johannes Schultz et al. Exp Brain Res. 2009 Apr.

Abstract

The ability to perceive facial motion is important to successfully interact in social environments. Previously, imaging studies have investigated neural correlates of facial motion primarily using abstract motion stimuli. Here, we studied how the brain processes natural non-rigid facial motion in direct comparison to static stimuli and matched phase-scrambled controls. As predicted from previous studies, dynamic faces elicit higher responses than static faces in lateral temporal areas corresponding to hMT+/V5 and STS. Interestingly, individually defined, static-face-sensitive regions in bilateral fusiform gyrus and left inferior occipital gyrus also respond more to dynamic than static faces. These results suggest integration of form and motion information during the processing of dynamic faces even in ventral temporal and inferior lateral occipital areas. In addition, our results show that dynamic stimuli are a robust tool to localize areas related to the processing of static and dynamic face information.

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Figures

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

Example stimulus images. Top All 26 frames of an example face movie stimulus (dynamic face_)_. Bottom All 26 frames of an example phase-scrambled face movie stimulus (dynamic scrambled). In the static conditions, only the last frame of each movie was shown, for the same duration as the dynamic stimuli

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

Results of the whole-brain ANOVA group statistics projected on the surface of an inflated standard structural scan. a Shows clusters responding more to static faces than static scrambled. b Shows clusters responding more to dynamic faces than dynamic scrambled. c Shows clusters responding more to dynamic faces than static faces. d Shows clusters with a significant interaction effect: (dynamic faces > dynamic scrambled) > (static faces > static scrambled). Insets in (d) show per cent signal change from fixation (mean and SEM over subjects) for static faces (SF), static scrambled (SS), dynamic faces (DF) and dynamic scrambled (DS) in left and right STS clusters (left and right insets, respectively). Maps are thresholded at p < 0.0001 uncorrected, but all activations survive whole-brain correction at p < 0.05. Gradient bar shows T values

Fig. 3

Fig. 3

Time-courses of responses to static faces, static scrambled, dynamic faces and dynamic scrambled in individually defined face-sensitive ROIs (identified by contrasting static faces with static scrambled). Average time-courses over subjects and SEM are shown

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