An objective method for measuring face detection thresholds using the sweep steady-state visual evoked response.

We introduce a sensitive method for measuring face detection thresholds rapidly, objectively, and independently of low-level visual cues. The method is based on the swept parameter steady-state visual evoked potential (ssVEP), in which a stimulus is presented at a specific temporal frequency while parametrically varying ("sweeping") the detectability of the stimulus. Here, the visibility of a face image was increased by progressive derandomization of the phase spectra of the image in a series of equally spaced steps. Alternations between face and fully randomized images at a constant rate (3/s) elicit a robust first harmonic response at 3 Hz specific to the structure of the face. High-density EEG was recorded from 10 human adult participants, who were asked to respond with a button-press as soon as they detected a face. The majority of participants produced an evoked response at the first harmonic (3 Hz) that emerged abruptly between 30% and 35% phase-coherence of the face, which was most prominent on right occipito-temporal sites. Thresholds for face detection were estimated reliably in single participants from 15 trials, or on each of the 15 individual face trials. The ssVEP-derived thresholds correlated with the concurrently measured perceptual face detection thresholds. This first application of the sweep VEP approach to high-level vision provides a sensitive and objective method that could be used to measure and compare visual perception thresholds for various object shapes and levels of categorization in different human populations, including infants and individuals with developmental delay.

[1]  V. Goffaux,et al.  Stepwise emergence of the face-sensitive N170 event-related potential component , 2003, Neuroreport.

[2]  C. Jacques,et al.  The N170 : understanding the time-course of face perception in the human brain , 2011 .

[3]  Bruno Rossion,et al.  Early (N170/M170) Face-Sensitivity Despite Right Lateral Occipital Brain Damage in Acquired Prosopagnosia , 2011, Front. Hum. Neurosci..

[4]  T. Allison,et al.  Face-sensitive regions in human extrastriate cortex studied by functional MRI. , 1995, Journal of neurophysiology.

[5]  Kalanit Grill-Spector,et al.  Sparsely-distributed organization of face and limb activations in human ventral temporal cortex , 2010, NeuroImage.

[6]  D. Jeffreys.  A face-responsive potential recorded from the human scalp , 2004, Experimental Brain Research.

[7]  Susan J Leat,et al.  The technique, validity and clinical use of the sweep VEP , 2008, Ophthalmic & physiological optics : the journal of the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians.

[8]  A. Parkin,et al.  Cerebral Lateralisation at Different Stages of Facial Processing , 1987, Cortex.

[9]  Guillaume A. Rousselet,et al.  Single-trial EEG dynamics of object and face visual processing , 2007, NeuroImage.

[10]  J. Findlay,et al.  Rapid Detection of Person Information in a Naturalistic Scene , 2008, Perception.

[11]  Carlo Umiltà,et al.  Newborns' preference for faces: what is crucial? , 2002, Developmental psychology.

[12]  B. Rossion,et al.  ERP evidence for the speed of face categorization in the human brain: Disentangling the contribution of low-level visual cues from face perception , 2011, Vision Research.

[13]  K Nakayama,et al.  Rapid assessment of visual function: an electronic sweep technique for the pattern visual evoked potential. , 1979, Investigative ophthalmology & visual science.

[14]  Shaul Hochstein,et al.  At first sight: A high-level pop out effect for faces , 2005, Vision Research.

[15]  Javid Sadr,et al.  Object recognition and Random Image Structure Evolution , 2004, Cogn. Sci..

[16]  Paul A. Viola,et al.  Robust Real-Time Face Detection , 2001, Proceedings Eighth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision. ICCV 2001.

[17]  G. Rousselet,et al.  Parametric study of EEG sensitivity to phase noise during face processing , 2008, BMC Neuroscience.

[18]  Bruno Rossion,et al.  Early Visually Evoked Electrophysiological Responses Over the Human Brain (P1, N170) Show Stable Patterns of Face-Sensitivity from 4 years to Adulthood , 2009, Front. Hum. Neurosci..

[19]  F. Tong,et al.  The timing of perceptual decisions for ambiguous face stimuli in the human ventral visual cortex. , 2006, Cerebral cortex.

[20]  R. Goebel,et al.  Holistic Face Categorization in Higher Order Visual Areas of the Normal and Prosopagnosic Brain: Toward a Non-Hierarchical View of Face Perception , 2011, Front. Hum. Neurosci..

[21]  Keiji Tanaka,et al.  Differences in onset latency of macaque inferotemporal neural responses to primate and non-primate faces. , 2005, Journal of neurophysiology.

[22]  Narendra Ahuja,et al.  Detecting Faces in Images: A Survey , 2002, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[23]  D Regan,et al.  Rapid objective refraction using evoked brain potentials. , 1973, Investigative ophthalmology.

[24]  B. Rossion,et al.  Robust sensitivity to facial identity in the right human occipito-temporal cortex as revealed by steady-state visual-evoked potentials. , 2011, Journal of vision.

[25]  A. Norcia,et al.  Spatial frequency sweep VEP: Visual acuity during the first year of life , 1985, Vision Research.

[26]  Anthony M. Norcia,et al.  Development of contrast sensitivity in the human infant , 1990, Vision Research.

[27]  P. Perona,et al.  What do we perceive in a glance of a real-world scene? , 2007, Journal of vision.

[28]  R. VanRullen.  On second glance: Still no high-level pop-out effect for faces , 2006, Vision Research.

[29]  P. Sajda,et al.  EEG-Informed fMRI Reveals Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Perceptual Decision Making , 2007, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[30]  Jesse S. Husk,et al.  Time course and robustness of ERP object and face differences. , 2008, Journal of vision.

[31]  J. Findlay,et al.  Face Detection in Peripheral Vision: Do Faces Pop Out? , 1997, Perception.

[32]  V. Bruce,et al.  The Effects of Distinctiveness in Recognising and Classifying Faces , 1986, Perception.

[33]  E. Cooper,et al.  Differences in the coding of spatial relations in face identification and basic-level object recognition. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[34]  Dean G. Purcell,et al.  The face-detection effect , 1986 .

[35]  Nikos K. Logothetis,et al.  Nonmonotonic noise tuning of BOLD fMRI signal to natural images in the visual cortex of the anesthetized monkey , 2001, Current Biology.

[36]  Sébastien M. Crouzet,et al.  Fast saccades toward faces: face detection in just 100 ms. , 2010, Journal of vision.

[37]  D. Purcell,et al.  The face-detection effect: Configuration enhances detection , 1988, Perception & psychophysics.

[38]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[39]  Bruno Rossion,et al.  Face categorization in visual scenes may start in a higher order area of the right fusiform gyrus: evidence from dynamic visual stimulation in neuroimaging. , 2011, Journal of neurophysiology.

[40]  Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman,et al.  3D shape reconstruction of Mooney faces , 2008, 2008 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

[41]  C. Jacques,et al.  Concurrent processing reveals competition between visual representations of faces , 2004, Neuroreport.

[42]  Bruno Rossion,et al.  Does physical interstimulus variance account for early electrophysiological face sensitive responses in the human brain? Ten lessons on the N170 , 2008, NeuroImage.

[43]  Susana T. L. Chung,et al.  Ideal observer analysis of crowding and the reduction of crowding through learning. , 2010, Journal of vision.

[44]  C. C. Goren,et al.  Visual following and pattern discrimination of face-like stimuli by newborn infants. , 1975, Pediatrics.

[45]  Margot J. Taylor,et al.  Spatio temporal dynamics of face recognition. , 2008, Cerebral cortex.

[46]  Patrick Cavanagh,et al.  Recovery of 3D volume from 2-tone images of novel objects , 1998, Cognition.

[47]  R. Hari,et al.  Face recognition and cortical responses show similar sensitivity to noise spatial frequency. , 2005, Cerebral cortex.

[48]  Doris Y. Tsao,et al.  Comparing face patch systems in macaques and humans , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[49]  Christian Büchel,et al.  Detecting fearful and neutral faces: BOLD latency differences in amygdala–hippocampal junction , 2006, NeuroImage.

[50]  D. Regan.  Some characteristics of average steady-state and transient responses evoked by modulated light. , 1966, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[51]  G. Rousselet,et al.  Is it an animal? Is it a human face? Fast processing in upright and inverted natural scenes. , 2003, Journal of vision.

[52]  Christof Koch,et al.  Predicting human gaze using low-level saliency combined with face detection , 2007, NIPS.

[53]  E. Halgren,et al.  Cognitive response profile of the human fusiform face area as determined by MEG. , 2000, Cerebral cortex.

[54]  R. Näsänen.  Spatial frequency bandwidth used in the recognition of facial images , 1999, Vision Research.

[55]  K. Nakayama,et al.  Face detection in normal and prosopagnosic individuals. , 2008, Journal of neuropsychology.

[56]  Shaul Hochstein,et al.  The wide window of face detection. , 2010, Journal of vision.

[57]  C. M. Mooney.  Age in the development of closure ability in children. , 1957, Canadian journal of psychology.

[58]  T. Allison,et al.  Human extrastriate visual cortex and the perception of faces, words, numbers, and colors. , 1994, Cerebral cortex.

[59]  Michael B. Lewis,et al.  Face Detection: Mapping Human Performance , 2003, Perception.

[60]  C. Büchel,et al.  The robustness of perception , 2005, The European journal of neuroscience.

[61]  D. Regan.  Human brain electrophysiology: Evoked potentials and evoked magnetic fields in science and medicine , 1989 .

[62]  T. Allison,et al.  Electrophysiological Studies of Face Perception in Humans , 1996, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[63]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Newborns' preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its subsequent decline , 1991, Cognition.

[64]  H. Nothdurft.  Faces and Facial Expressions do not Pop Out , 1993, Perception.

[65]  D. Regan.  Steady-state evoked potentials. , 1977, Journal of the Optical Society of America.

[66]  J. Haxby,et al.  The distributed human neural system for face perception , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[67]  R. Hess,et al.  What causes non-monotonic tuning of fMRI response to noisy images? , 2002, Current Biology.

[68]  J. Sergent,et al.  Functional neuroanatomy of face and object processing. A positron emission tomography study. , 1992, Brain : a journal of neurology.