Neural Representations of Faces Are Tuned to Eye Movements

Abstract

Eye movements provide a functional signature of how human vision is achieved. Many recent studies have consistently reported robust idiosyncratic visual sampling strategies during face recognition. Whether these interindividual differences are mirrored by idiosyncratic neural responses remains unknown. To this aim, we first tracked eye movements of male and female observers during face recognition. Additionally, for every observer we obtained an objective index of neural face discrimination through EEG that was recorded while they fixated different facial information. We found that foveation of facial features fixated longer during face recognition elicited stronger neural face discrimination responses across all observers. This relationship occurred independently of interindividual differences in preferential facial information sampling (e.g., eye vs mouth lookers), and started as early as the first fixation. Our data show that eye movements play a functional role during face processing by providing the neural system with the information that is diagnostic to a specific observer. The effective processing of identity involves idiosyncratic, rather than universal face representations.

Neural Representations of Faces are Tuned to Eye Movements

“…The recorded 11 EEG was analyzed using Letswave 5 (http://nocions.webnode.com/letswave; (Mouraux & 12 Iannetti, 2008)). The raw data are available in the public domain (Stacchi et al, 2018). 13…”

“…Stacchi, Ramon, Lao, & Caldara, 2018). Data were registered by using the Psychophysics 13(Brainard, 1997) and the EyeLink (Cornelissen, Peters, & Palmer, 2002) Toolbox running in a 14 MatlabR2013b environment.…”

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“…The texture of MRs is also a concept that has been already addressed in philosophy, for example by Laugier (2003): "A [mental] representation can be a relationship (something that is represented to someone), but [can also act as] a vehicle for the entity that is represented (content, statement, state, perception)" (p. 291). Although MRs are specific to each individual, they nevertheless establish the common ground for communication of perceived signals (Charest and Kriegeskorte, 2015;Stacchi et al, 2019). Interindividual variability in auditory cognition is also studied in specific psychoacoustic experiments (Pelofi et al, 2017).…”

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“…Finally, previous research revealed evidence for stable individual differences in eye movements during face recognition. These eye movements play a functional role during face processing and how well people recognize faces 20 , 21 . We investigated fixation compliance and performed an eye-tracking experiment in an independent sample.…”