'I Look in Your Eyes, Honey': Internal face features induce spatial frequency preference for human face processing
Numerous psychophysical experiments found that humans preferably rely on a narrow band of spatial frequencies for recognition of face identity. A recently conducted theoretical study by the author suggests that this frequency preference reflects an adaptation of the brain's face processing mach...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2009 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya) |
| Repositorio: | Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:recercat.cat:2445/146878 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/146878 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Psicofísica Neurones sensorials Psycophysics Sensory neurons |
| Sumario: | Numerous psychophysical experiments found that humans preferably rely on a narrow band of spatial frequencies for recognition of face identity. A recently conducted theoretical study by the author suggests that this frequency preference reflects an adaptation of the brain's face processing machinery to this specific stimulus class (i.e., faces). The purpose of the present study is to examine this property in greater detail and to specifically elucidate the implication of internal face features (i.e., eyes, mouth, and nose). To this end, I parameterized Gabor filters to match the spatial receptive field of contrast sensitive neurons in the primary visual cortex (simple and complex cells). Filter responses to a large number of face images were computed, aligned for internal face features, and response-equalized ("whitened"). The results demonstrate that the frequency preference is caused by internal face features. Thus, the psychophysically observed human frequency bias for face processing seems to be specifically caused by the intrinsic spatial frequency content of internal face features. |
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