“…1 d). Hybrid neutral faces were presented unfiltered (i.e., neutral LSF was superimposed to neutral HSF, resulting in a neutral broadband image; see (Prete et al 2018 ; Tommasi et al 2021 ). Fig.…”
Emotions are processed in the brain through a cortical route, responsible for detailed-conscious recognition and mainly based on image High Spatial Frequencies (HSF), and a subcortical route, responsible for coarse-unconscious processing and based on Low SF (LSF). However, little is known about possible changes in the functioning of the two routes in ageing. In the present go/no-go online task, 112 younger adults and 111 older adults were asked to press a button when a happy or angry face appeared (go) and to inhibit responses for neutral faces (no-go). Facial stimuli were presented unfiltered (broadband image), filtered at HSF and LSF, and hybrids (LSF of an emotional expression superimposed to the HSF of the same face with a neutral expression). All stimuli were also presented rotated on the vertical axis (upside-down) to investigate the global analysis of faces in ageing. Results showed an overall better performance of younger compared to older participants for all conditions except for hybrid stimuli. The expected face-inversion effect was confirmed in both age groups. We conclude that, besides an overall worsening of the perceptual skill with ageing, no specific impairment in the functioning of both the cortical and the subcortical route emerged.
“…1 d). Hybrid neutral faces were presented unfiltered (i.e., neutral LSF was superimposed to neutral HSF, resulting in a neutral broadband image; see (Prete et al 2018 ; Tommasi et al 2021 ). Fig.…”
Emotions are processed in the brain through a cortical route, responsible for detailed-conscious recognition and mainly based on image High Spatial Frequencies (HSF), and a subcortical route, responsible for coarse-unconscious processing and based on Low SF (LSF). However, little is known about possible changes in the functioning of the two routes in ageing. In the present go/no-go online task, 112 younger adults and 111 older adults were asked to press a button when a happy or angry face appeared (go) and to inhibit responses for neutral faces (no-go). Facial stimuli were presented unfiltered (broadband image), filtered at HSF and LSF, and hybrids (LSF of an emotional expression superimposed to the HSF of the same face with a neutral expression). All stimuli were also presented rotated on the vertical axis (upside-down) to investigate the global analysis of faces in ageing. Results showed an overall better performance of younger compared to older participants for all conditions except for hybrid stimuli. The expected face-inversion effect was confirmed in both age groups. We conclude that, besides an overall worsening of the perceptual skill with ageing, no specific impairment in the functioning of both the cortical and the subcortical route emerged.
“…A technique that has been used to investigate the relevant spatial frequency bands for a given task is filtering images with low pass and high pass filters, in addition to using hybrid images (Schyns & Oliva, 1994;Prete et al, 2015;Tommasi et al, 2021). Hybrid stimuli mix two different pictures at two different spatial frequency bandwidths.…”
The authors investigated the influence of spatial frequencies in foveal vision in glaucomatous patients in a recognition task of facial expressions. Nineteen patients, 16 age-matched and 14 young controls saw centrally presented photographs of faces. Participants categorized the facial expressions as happy, angry or neutral. Two versions were tested: filtered faces of either low (LSF) or high (HSF) spatial frequency content and hybrid faces constructed from a face with LSF content superimposed on a face with HSF content with differing facial expressions. Compared to age-matched controls a significant deficit was observed both on HSF and on LSF filtered faces for patients. Controls, but not patients, were biased towards the HSF component of the hybrid faces. Different spatial frequencies are normally used to recognize different facial expressions. Impaired processing of a spatial frequency bandwidth due to an ocular pathology can therefore lead to misinterpretation of emotions, and impact on social interactions.
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