Neural Correlates of Own- and Other-Face Perception in Body Dysmorphic Disorder (original) (raw)
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Inverted face processing in body dysmorphic disorder
Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2010
Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) are preoccupied with perceived defects in appearance. Preliminary evidence suggests abnormalities in global and local visual information processing. The objective of this study was to compare global and local processing in BDD subjects and healthy controls by testing the face inversion effect, in which inverted (upside-down) faces are recognized more slowly and less accurately relative to upright faces. Eighteen medication-free subjects with BDD and 17 matched, healthy controls performed a recognition task with sets of upright and inverted faces on a computer screen that were either presented for short duration (500 msec) or long duration (5000 msec). Response time and accuracy rates were analyzed using linear and logistic mixed effects models, respectively. Results indicated that the inversion effect for response time was smaller in BDD subjects than controls during the long duration stimuli, but was not significantly different during the short duration stimuli. Inversion effect on accuracy rates did not differ significantly between groups during either of the two durations. Lesser inversion effect in BDD subjects may be due to greater detail-oriented and piecemeal processing for long duration stimuli. Similar results between groups for short duration stimuli suggest that they may be normally engaging configural and holistic processing for brief presentations. Abnormal visual information processing in BDD may contribute to distorted perception of appearance; this may not be limited to their own faces, but to others' faces as well.
Visual Information Processing of Faces in Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Archives of General Psychiatry, 2007
Context: Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a severe psychiatric condition in which individuals are preoccupied with perceived appearance defects. Clinical observation suggests that patients with BDD focus on details of their appearance at the expense of configural elements. This study examines abnormalities in visual information processing in BDD that may underlie clinical symptoms. Objective: To determine whether patients with BDD have abnormal patterns of brain activation when visually processing others' faces with high, low, or normal spatial frequency information.
Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1422-1427). , 2012
The face inversion effect (FIE) refers to the decline in performance in recognizing faces that are inverted compared to the recognition of faces in their normal upright orientation (Yin, 1969). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects performed an Old/New recognition study on normal and Thatcherised faces presented in upright and inverted orientation. A large difference in processing between normal upright faces and normal inverted faces was observed at occipital-temporal sites about 165 ms following stimulus onset, mainly in the right hemisphere. Thus electrophysiological activity, which corresponds to the previously described N170, had larger amplitude and was delayed for normal inverted faces as compared to normal upright ones. By contrast, the activity for Thatcherised inverted faces was not significantly changed or delayed as compared to Thatcherised upright stimuli. These results combine to show how the effect of face inversion on the N170 is reliably greater when the faces are normal rather than Thatcherised. Finally, these finding complement, at a neural level, our behavioral studies which suggest that the loss of some configural information affects the FIE.
Neurodynamic Studies on Emotional and Inverted Faces in an Oddball Paradigm
Brain Topography, 2000
The detection of a change in a face stimulus was studied in an oddball paradigm. Event-related potentials (ERPs) and MEG responses to face stimuli were recorded in four conditions: 1) happy standard, neutral deviant; 2) neutral standard, neutral deviant; 3) inverted happy standard, inverted neutral deviant; 4) inverted neutral standard, inverted neutral deviant. In all conditions, the target was a face with glasses. Neutral deviants elicited a negative deflection (with a maximum around 280 ms) in ERP and MEG responses, an effect similar to auditory mismatch negativity. Face inversion diminished deviance-related negativity, implying an important role of face recognition in the observed effect. Emotional content and larger physical differences between stimuli in conditions 1 and 3 compared to conditions 2 and 4 did not show statistically significant effect on the neutral-deviant-related negativity.
The Neural Basis of the Behavioral Face-Inversion Effect
Current Biology, 2005
Two of the most robust markers for ''special'' face processing are the behavioral face-inversion effect (FIE)the disproportionate drop in recognition of upsidedown (inverted) stimuli relative to upright faces-and the face-selective fMRI response in the fusiform face area (FFA). However, the relationship between these two face-selective markers is unknown. Here we report that the behavioral FIE is closely associated with the fMRI response in the FFA, but not in other faceselective or object-selective regions. The FFA and the face-selective region in the superior temporal sulcus (f_STS), but not the occipital face-selective region (OFA), showed a higher response to upright than inverted faces. However, only in the FFA was this fMRI-FIE positively correlated across subjects with the behavioral FIE. Second, the FFA, but not the f_STS, showed greater neural sensitivity to differences between faces when they were upright than inverted, suggesting a possible neural mechanism for the behavioral FIE. Although a similar trend was found in the occipital face area (OFA), it was less robust than the FFA. Taken together, our data suggest that among the face-selective and object-selective regions, the FFA is a primary neural source of the behavioral FIE.
Psychiatry Research, 2013
Individuals with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) are preoccupied with perceived defects in their appearance that are not visible to others. An excessive focus and processing of details has been proposed as a possible mechanism underlying this distorted self-image in BDD. The nature and extent of visuoperceptual abnormalities in BDD however require further investigation; specifically, it remains unclear whether feature-based processing in BDD is a result of a failure of holistic perceptual processes. The present study evaluated whether BDD is associated with an impairment in global processing. Twenty-five individuals with a primary diagnosis of BDD (15 unmedicated, 10 medicated) and 25 matched healthy controls were administered three robust behavioural tasks that test holistic encoding, namely the face inversion, the composite and the navon tasks. Overall, individuals in the BDD and control groups performed similarly in all aspects of holistic processing tested. Our findings suggest that the excessive focus on specific aspects of appearance in BDD may not be explained by impairments in the global encoding of visual information. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research on visual processing in BDD are discussed.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2013
Holistic coding for faces is shown in several illusions that demonstrate integration of the percept across the entire face. The illusions occur upright but, crucially, not inverted. Converting the illusions into experimental tasks that measure their strength -and thus index degree of holistic coding -is often considered straightforward yet in fact relies on a hidden assumption, namely that there is no contribution to the experimental measure from secondary cognitive factors. For the composite effect, a relevant secondary factor is size of the "spotlight" of visuospatial attention. The composite task assumes this spotlight can be easily restricted to the target half (e.g., top-half) of the compound face stimulus. Yet, if this assumption were not true then a large spotlight, in the absence of holistic perception, could produce a false composite effect, present even for inverted faces and contributing partially to the score for upright faces. We review evidence that various factors can influence spotlight size: race/culture (Asians often prefer a more global distribution of attention than Caucasians); sex (females can be more global); appearance of the join or gap between face halves; and location of the eyes, which typically attract attention. Results from five experiments then show inverted faces can sometimes produce large false composite effects, and imply that whether this happens or not depends on complex interactions between causal factors. We also report, for both identity and expression, that only top-half face targets (containing eyes) produce valid composite measures. A sixth experiment demonstrates an example of a false inverted part-whole effect, where encoding-specificity is the secondary cognitive factor. We conclude the inverted face control should be tested in all composite and part-whole studies, and an effect for upright faces should be interpreted as a pure measure of holistic processing only when the experimental design produces no effect inverted.
The body inversion effect is mediated by face-selective not body-selective brain areas
Journal of Vision, 2010
Evidence suggesting that the brain has specialized mechanisms for processing human bodies include the discovery of body-selective brain areas and the behavioral body inversion effect (BIE). Interestingly, the BIE (worse discrimination of inverted vs upright bodies) disappears for headless bodies, implying a critical role of the head in this effect. Previous studies have shown that the face inversion effect is mediated by the fusiform face-selective area. Given the central role that the head plays in the behavioral BIE, we asked whether it is mediated by face-selective or body-selective areas. In two event-related functional magnetic resonance-adaptation experiments, we examined the representation of upright and inverted bodies in category-selective occipitotemporal areas. In the first experiment we presented whole (faceless) bodies, while in the second we presented headless bodies. Both experiments consisted of pairs of upright and inverted bodies that were either the same or different in posture. Body-selective areas showed similar adaptation effects for upright and inverted whole or headless bodies, suggesting similar discrimination for the two orientations regardless of the head. In contrast, faceselective areas showed an adaptation effect to upright but not inverted bodies, and for whole but not for headless bodies. Thus, the response of the face-selective, but not body-selective areas, is consistent with the behavioral BIE in that it shows better discrimination for upright than inverted bodies, for whole but not for headless bodies. These results suggest a critical role for the head in the processing of human bodies.