The beneficial effect of valid compared to invalid cues on attention performance is a basic attentional mechanism, but the impact of emotional content on cue validity is poorly understood. We tested whether the effect of cue validity on attention performance differed when cues were angry, happy, or neutral faces. Moreover, we used scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting the ca...

Processing information from faces is crucial to understanding others and to adapting to social life. Many studies have investigated responses to facial emotions to provide a better understanding of the processes and the neural networks involved. Moreover, several studies have revealed abnormalities of emotional face processing and their neural correlates in affective disorders. The aim of this ...

Humans are better at recognizing human faces than faces of other species. However, it is unclear whether this species sensitivity can be seen at early perceptual stages of face processing and whether it involves species sensitivity for important facial features like the eyes. These questions were addressed by comparing the modulations of the N170 ERP component to faces, eyes and eyeless faces o...

We are typically more accurate at remembering own- than other-race faces. This "own-race bias" has been suggested to result from enhanced expertise with and more efficient perceptual processing of own-race than other-race faces. In line with this idea, the N170, an event-related potential correlate of face perception, has been repeatedly found to be larger for other-race faces. Other studies, h...

Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies have revealed that faces and words show a robust difference in the lateralization of their N170. The present study investigated the development of this differential lateralization in school-age boys. We assessed the potential role of fetal testosterone (FT) level as a factor biasing the prenatal development of lateralization, and the role of readin...

It is widely reported that inverting a face dramatically affects its recognition. Previous studies have shown that face inversion increases the amplitude and delays the latency of the face-specific N170 component of the event-related potential (ERP) and also enhances the amplitude of the occipital P1 component (latency 100-132 ms). The present study investigates whether these effects of face in...

Individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) are strongly impaired in recognizing faces, but it is controversial whether this deficit is linked to atypical visual-perceptual face processing mechanisms. Previous behavioural studies have suggested that face perception in DP might be less sensitive to the canonical spatial configuration of face parts in upright faces. To test this prediction,...

In this study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to trace the temporal dynamics of phonological consistency and phonetic combinability in the reading of Chinese phonograms. The data showed a significant consistency-by-combinability interaction at N170. High phonetic combinability characters elicited greater negativity at N170 than did low phonetic combinability characters, and the combi...

In five experiments, we examine the neural correlates of the interaction between upright faces, inverted faces, and visual noise. In Experiment 1, we examine a component termed the N170 for upright and inverted faces presented with and without noise. Results show a smaller amplitude for inverted faces than upright faces when presented in noise, whereas the reverse is true without noise. In Expe...

The aim of the study was to identify possible sensitive phases in the development of the processing system for human faces. We tested the neural processing of faces in 11 humans who had been blind from birth and had undergone cataract surgery between 2 mo and 14 y of age. Pictures of faces and houses, scrambled versions of these pictures, and pictures of butterflies were presented while event-r...