Previous studies have suggested that the human visual system processes faces and bodies holistically—that is, the different body parts are integrated into a unified representation. However, the time course of this integrative process is less known. In the present study, we investigated this issue by recording event-related potentials evoked by a face and two hands presented simultaneously and in different configurations. When the hands were rotated to obtain a biologically implausible configuration, a reduction of the P2 amplitude was observed relative to the condition in which the face and hands were retained in their veridical configuration and were supplemented with visual cues to highlight further the overall body posture. Our results show that the P2 component is sensitive to manipulations affecting the configuration of face and hand stimuli and suggest that the P2 reflects the operation of perceptual mechanisms responsible for the integrated processing of visually presented body parts.
AtkinsonA. P., DittrichW. H., GemmellA. J., & YoungA. W. (2004). Emotion perception from dynamic and static body expressions in point-light and full-light displays. Perception, 33, 717–746. doi:10.1068/p5096
2.
AviezerH., TropeY., & TodorovA. (2012). Holistic person processing: Faces with bodies tell the whole story. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 20–37. doi:10.1037/a0027411
3.
BankóE. M., GálV., KörtvélyesJ., KovácsG., & VidnyánszkyZ. (2011). Dissociating the effect of noise on sensory processing and overall decision difficulty. The Journal Neuroscience, 31, 2663–2674. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2725-10.2011
4.
BentinS., AllisonT., PuceA., PerezE., & McCarthyG. (1996). Electrophysiological studies of face perception in humans. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 8, 551–565. doi:10.1162/jocn.1996.8.6.551
5.
BoutsenL., HumphreysG. W., PraamstraP., & WarbrickT. (2006). Comparing neural correlates of configural processing in faces and objects: An ERP study of the thatcher illusion. Neuroimage, 32, 352–367. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.03.023
6.
BrainardD. H. (1997). The psychophysics toolbox. Spatial Vision, 10, 433–436. doi:10.1163/156856897X00357
7.
BurkhardtA., BlahaL. M., JursB. S., RhodesG., JefferyL., WyatteD., … BuseyT. (2010). Adaptation modulates the electrophysiological substrates of perceived facial distortion: Support for opponent coding. Neuropsychologia, 48, 3743–3756. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.08.016
8.
CaharelS., PoirouxS., BernardC., ThibautF., LalondeR., & RebaiM. (2002). ERPs associated with familiarity and degree of familiarity during face recognition. International Journal of Neuroscience, 112, 1499–1512. doi:10.1080/00207450290158368
9.
ChatrianG. E., LettichE., & NelsonP. L. (1985). Ten percent electrode system for topographic studies of spontaneous and evoked EEG activity. American Journal of EEG Technology, 25, 83–92.
10.
DowningP. E., JiangY., ShumanM., & KanwisherN. (2001). A cortical area selective for visual processing of the human body. Science, 293, 2470–2473. doi:10.1126/science.1063414
11.
DunlapW. P., CortinaJ. M., VaslowJ. B., & BurkeM. J. (1996). Meta-analysis of experiments with matched groups or repeated measures designs. Psychological Methods, 1, 170–177. doi:10.1037/1082-989X.1.2.170
12.
GauthierI., TarrM. J., MoylanJ., SkudlarskiP., GoreJ. C., & AndersonA. W. (2000). The fusiform “face area” is part of a network that processes faces at the individual level. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 495–504. doi:10.1162/089892900562165
13.
GhumanA. S., McDanielJ. R., & MartinA. (2010). Face adaptation without a face. Current Biology, 20, 32–36. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.10.077
14.
GligaT., & Dehaene-LambertzG. (2005). Structural encoding of body and face in human infants and adults. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 1328–1340. doi:10.1162/0898929055002481
15.
GrattonG., ColesM. G., & DonchinE. (1983). A new method for off-line removal of ocular artifact. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 55, 468–484. doi:10.1016/0013-4694(83)90135-9
16.
GrossmanE. D., & BlakeR. (2002). Brain areas active during visual perception of biological motion. Neuron, 35, 1167–1175. doi:10.1016/S0896-6273(02)00897-8
17.
HahnA. C., JantzenK. J., & SymonsL. A. (2012). Thatcherization impacts the processing of own-race faces more so than other-race faces: An ERP study. Social Neuroscience, 7, 113–125. doi:10.1080/17470919.2011.583080
18.
HalitH., de HaanM., & JohnsonM. H. (2000). Modulation of event-related potentials by prototypical and atypical faces. Neuroreport, 11, 1871–1875. doi:10.1097/00001756-200006260-00014
19.
IshizuT., AmemiyaK., YumotoM., & KojimaS. (2010). Magnetoencephalographic study of the neural responses in body perception. Neuroscience Letters, 481, 36–40. doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2010.06.047
20.
ItierR. J., & TaylorM. J. (2002). Inversion and contrast polarity reversal affect both encoding and recognition processes of unfamiliar faces: A repetition study using ERPs. Neuroimage, 15, 353–372. doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.0982
21.
ItzM. L., SchweinbergerS. R., SchulzC., & KaufmannJ. M. (2014). Neural correlates of facilitations in face learning by selective caricaturing of facial shape or reflectance. Neuroimage, 102, 736–747. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.08.042
22.
JohanssonG. (1973). Visual perception of biological motion and a model of its analysis. Perception & Psychophysics, 14, 202–211.
23.
KaiserD., StrnadL., SeidlK. N., KastnerS., & PeelenM. V. (2014). Whole person-evoked fMRI activity patterns in human fusiform gyrus are accurately modeled by a linear combination of face- and body-evoked activity patterns. Journal of Neurophysiology, 111, 82–90. doi:10.1152/jn.00371.2013
24.
KanwisherN., McDermottJ., & ChunM. M. (1997). The fusiform face area: A module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. The Journal of Neuroscience, 17, 4302–4311.
25.
KaufmannJ. M., SchulzC., & SchweinbergerS. R. (2013). High and low performers differ in the use of shape information for face recognition. Neuropsychologia, 51, 1310–1319. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.03.015
26.
KaufmannJ. M., & SchweinbergerS. R. (2012). The faces you remember: Caricaturing shape facilitates brain processes reflecting the acquisition of new face representations. Biological Psychology, 89, 21–33. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.08.011
27.
KesslerK., & MielletS. (2013). Perceiving conspecifics as integrated body-gestalts is an embodied process. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142, 774–790. doi:10.1037/a0029617
28.
KovácsG., ZimmerM., BankóÉ., HarzaI., AntalA., & VidnyánszkyZ. (2006). Electrophysiological correlates of visual adaptation to faces and body-parts in humans. Cerebral Cortex, 16, 742–753. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhj020
29.
LatinusM., & TaylorM. J. (2005). Holistic processing of faces: Learning effects with mooney faces. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 1316–1327. doi:10.1162/0898929055002490
30.
LatinusM., & TaylorM. J. (2006). Face processing stages: Impact of difficulty and the separation of effects. Brain Research, 1123, 179–187. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2006.09.031
31.
LucasH. D., ChiaoJ. Y., & PallerK. A. (2011). Why some faces won't be remembered: brain potentials illuminate successful versus unsuccessful encoding for same-race and other-race faces. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 20. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2011.00020
32.
MaurerD., Le GrandR., & MondlochC. J. (2002). The many faces of configural processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 255–260. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(02)01903-4
33.
MeerenH. K., HadjikhaniN., AhlforsS. P., HamalainenM. S., & de GelderB. (2008). Early category-specific cortical activation revealed by visual stimulus inversion. PloS One, 3, e3503. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003503
34.
MeerenH. K., van HeijnsbergenC. C., & de GelderB. (2005). Rapid perceptual integration of facial expression and emotional body language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102, 16518–16523. doi:10.1073/pnas.0507650102
35.
MestryN., MenneerT., WengerM. J., BenikosN., McCarthyR. A., & DonnellyN. (2014). The role of configurality in the thatcher illusion: An ERP study. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 445–452. doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0705-3
36.
MilivojevicB., ClappW. C., JohnsonB. W., & CorballisM. C. (2003). Turn that frown upside down: ERP effects of thatcherization of misorientated faces. Psychophysiology, 40, 967–978. doi:10.1111/1469-8986.00115
37.
MinnebuschD. A., SuchanB., & DaumI. (2009). Losing your head: Behavioral and electrophysiological effects of body inversion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 865–874. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21074
38.
MondlochC. J. (2012). Sad or fearful? The influence of body posture on adults’ and children's perception of facial displays of emotion. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 111, 180–196. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2011.08.003
39.
NasanenR. (1999). Spatial frequency bandwidth used in the recognition of facial images. Vision Research, 39, 3824–3833. doi:10.1016/S0042-6989(99)00096-6
40.
NémethK., KovácsP., VakliP., KovácsGy., & ZimmerM. (2014). Phase noise reveals early category-specific modulation of the event-related potentials. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 367. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00367
41.
PelliD. G. (1997). The videoToolbox software for visual psychophysics: Transforming numbers into movies. Spatial Vision, 10, 437–442. doi:10.1163/156856897X00366
42.
PesciarelliF., SarloM., & LeoI. (2011). The time course of implicit processing of facial features: An event-related potential study. Neuropsychologia, 49, 1154–1161. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.003
43.
PhiliastidesM. G., RatcliffR., & SajdaP. (2006). Neural representation of task difficulty and decision making during perceptual categorization: A timing diagram. The Journal Neuroscience, 26, 8965–8975. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1655-06.2006
44.
PitcherD., CharlesL., DevlinJ. T., WalshV., & DuchaineB. (2009). Triple dissociation of faces, bodies, and objects in extrastriate cortex. Current Biology, 19, 319–324. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.01.007
45.
PourtoisG., PeelenM. V., SpinelliL., SeeckM., & VuilleumierP. (2007). Direct intracranial recording of body-selective responses in human extrastriate visual cortex. Neuropsychologia, 45, 2621–2625. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.04.005
46.
RobbinsR., McKoneE., & EdwardsM. (2007). Aftereffects for face attributes with different natural variability: Adapter position effects and neural models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33, 570–592. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.33.3.570
47.
RobbinsR. A., & ColtheartM. (2012). Left–right holistic integration of human bodies. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 1962–1974. doi:10.1080/17470218.2012.674145
48.
RossionB. (2013). The composite face illusion: A whole window into our understanding of holistic face perception. Visual Cognition, 21, 139–253. doi:10.1080/13506285.2013.772929
49.
RossionB. (2014). Understanding individual face discrimination by means of fast periodic visual stimulation. Experimental Brain Research, 232, 1599–1621. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.02.013
50.
RossionB., GauthierI., TarrM. J., DesplandP., BruyerR., LinotteS., & CrommelinckM. (2000). The N170 occipito-temporal component is delayed and enhanced to inverted faces but not to inverted objects: An electrophysiological account of face-specific processes in the human brain. Neuroreport, 11, 69–74.
51.
RossionB., & JacquesC. (2011). The N170: Understanding the time-course of face perception in the human brain. In LuckS. J. & KappenmanE. S. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of event-related potential components (pp. 115–142). New York: Oxford University Press.
52.
SadehB., PitcherD., BrandmanT., EisenA., ThalerA., & YovelG. (2011). Stimulation of category-selective brain areas modulates ERP to their preferred categories. Current Biology, 21, 1894–1899. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.09.030
53.
SchmalzlL., ZopfR., & WilliamsM. A. (2012). From head to toe: Evidence for selective brain activation reflecting visual perception of whole individuals. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 108. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2012.00108
54.
SchulzC., KaufmannJ. M., KurtA., & SchweinbergerS. R. (2012). Faces forming traces: Neurophysiological correlates of learning naturally distinctive and caricatured faces. Neuroimage, 63, 491–500. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.080
55.
SchulzC., KaufmannJ. M., WaltherL., & SchweinbergerS. R. (2012). Effects of anticaricaturing vs. caricaturing and their neural correlates elucidate a role of shape for face learning. Neuropsychologia, 50, 2426–2434. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.06.013
56.
SchwarzloseR. F., BakerC. I., & KanwisherN. (2005). Separate face and body selectivity on the fusiform gyrus. The Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 11055–11059. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2621-05.2005
57.
Soria BauserD. A., SchriewerE., & SuchanB. (2014). Dissociation between the behavioural and electrophysiological effects of the face and body composite illusions. British Journal of Psychology. doi:10.1111/bjop.12101
58.
Soria BauserD. A., SuchanB., & DaumI. (2011). Differences between perception of human faces and body shapes: Evidence from the composite illusion. Vision Research, 51, 195–202. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2010.11.007
59.
StahlJ., WieseH., & SchweinbergerS. R. (2008). Expertise and own-race bias in face processing: An event-related potential study. Neuroreport, 19, 583–587. doi:10.1097/WNR.0b013e3282f97b4d
60.
StahlJ., WieseH., & SchweinbergerS. R. (2010). Learning task affects ERP-correlates of the own-race bias, but not recognition memory performance. Neuropsychologia, 48, 2027–2040. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.03.024
61.
StekelenburgJ. J., & de GelderB. (2004). The neural correlates of perceiving human bodies: An ERP study on the body-inversion effect. Neuroreport, 15, 777–780. doi:10.1097/01.wnr.0000119730.93564.e8
62.
TanakaJ. W., & FarahM. J. (1993). Parts and wholes in face recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46, 225–245. doi:10.1080/14640749308401045
63.
TanakaJ. W., KieferM., & BukachC. M. (2004). A holistic account of the own-race effect in face recognition: Evidence from a cross-cultural study. Cognition, 93, B1–B9. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.011
64.
TaylorJ. C., RobertsM. V., DowningP. E., & ThierryG. (2010). Functional characterisation of the extrastriate body area based on the N1 ERP component. Brain and Cognition, 73, 153–159. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2010.04.001
65.
ThierryG., PegnaA. J., DoddsC., RobertsM., BasanS., & DowningP. (2006). An event-related potential component sensitive to images of the human body. Neuroimage, 32, 871–879. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.03.060
66.
ThompsonP. (1980). Margaret thatcher: A new illusion. Perception, 9, 483–484. doi:10.1068/p090483
67.
Van den StockJ., & de GelderB. (2014). Face identity matching is influenced by emotions conveyed by face and body. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8.
68.
Van den StockJ., RighartR., & de GelderB. (2007). Body expressions influence recognition of emotions in the face and voice. Emotion, 7, 487–494. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.3.487
69.
WieseH. (2012). The role of age and ethnic group in face recognition memory: ERP evidence from a combined own-age and own-race bias study. Biological Psychology, 89, 137–147. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.10.002
70.
WieseH., KaufmannJ. M., & SchweinbergerS. R. (2014). The neural signature of the own-race bias: Evidence from event-related potentials. Cerebral Cortex, 24, 826–835. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhs369
71.
WieseH., KomesJ., & SchweinbergerS. R. (2012). Daily-life contact affects the own-age bias and neural correlates of face memory in elderly participants. Neuropsychologia, 50, 3496–3508. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.09.022
72.
WieseH., SchweinbergerS. R., & HansenK. (2008). The age of the beholder: ERP evidence of an own-age bias in face memory. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2973–2985. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.06.007
73.
WillemsS., VranckenL., GermeysF., & VerfaillieK. (2014). Holistic processing of human body postures: Evidence from the composite effect. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 618. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00618
74.
YoungA. W., HellawellD., & HayD. C. (1987). Configurational information in face perception. Perception, 16, 747–759. doi:10.1068/p160747n
75.
ZhengX., MondlochC. J., & SegalowitzS. J. (2012). The timing of individual face recognition in the brain. Neuropsychologia, 50, 1451–1461. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.02.030
