When a visual stimulus is suppressed from awareness, processing of the suppressed image is necessarily reduced. Although adaptation to simple image properties such as orientation still occurs, adaptation to high-level properties such as face identity is eliminated. Here we show that emotional facial expression continues to be processed even under complete suppression, as indexed by substantial facial expression aftereffects.
BlakeR.FoxR. (1974). Adaptation to invisible gratings and site of binocular rivalry suppression. Nature, 249, 488–490.
2.
BrainardD.H. (1997). The Psychophysics Toolbox. Spatial Vision, 10, 433–436.
3.
BruceV.YoungA. (1986). Understanding face recognition. British Journal of Psychology, 77, 305–327.
4.
FoxC.J.BartonJ.J.S. (2007). What is adapted in face adaptation? The neural representations of expression in the human visual system. Brain Research, 1127, 80–89.
5.
HaxbyJ.V.HoffmanE.A.GobbiniM.I. (2000). The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 223–233.
6.
HumphreysG.W.DonnellyN.RiddochM.J. (1993). Expression is computed separately from facial identity, and it is computed separately for moving and static faces—neuropsychological evidence. Neuropsychologia, 31, 173–181.
7.
JiangY.HeS. (2006). Cortical responses to invisible faces: Dissociating subsystems for facial-information processing. Current Biology, 16, 2023–2029.
8.
LehmkuhleS.W.FoxR. (1975). Effect of binocular rivalry suppression on motion aftereffect. Vision Research, 15, 855–859.
MoradiF.KochC.ShimojoS. (2005). Face adaptation depends on seeing the face. Neuron, 45, 169–175.
11.
MurphyS.T.ZajoncR.B. (1993). Affect, cognition, and awareness—affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 723–739.
12.
PasleyB.N.MayesL.C.SchultzR.T. (2004). Subcortical discrimination of unperceived objects during binocular rivalry. Neuron, 42, 163–172.
13.
PelliD.G. (1997). The VideoToolbox software for visual psychophysics: Transforming numbers into movies. Spatial Vision, 10, 437–442.
14.
PessoaL.JapeeS.SturmanD.UngerleiderL.G. (2006). Target visibility and visual awareness modulate amygdala responses to fearful faces. Cerebral Cortex, 16, 366–375.
15.
SergerieK.ChocholC.ArmonyJ.L. (2008). The role of the amygdala in emotional processing: A quantitative meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 32, 811–830.
16.
TongF.NakayamaK.VaughanJ.T.KanwisherN. (1998). Binocular rivalry and visual awareness in human extrastriate cortex. Neuron, 21, 753–759.
17.
TottenhamN.TanakaJ.W.LeonA.C.McCarryT.NurseM.HareT.A.. (2009). The NimStim set of facial expressions: Judgments from untrained research participants. Psychiatry Research, 168, 242–249.
VuilleumierP.PourtoisG. (2007). Distributed and interactive brain mechanisms during emotion face perception: Evidence from functional neuroimaging. Neuropsychologia, 45, 174–194.
20.
WhalenP.J.KaganJ.CookR.G.DavisF.C.KimH.PolisS.. (2004). Human amygdala responsivity to masked fearful eye whites. Science, 306, 2061.
21.
WhalenP.J.RauchS.L.EtcoffN.L.McInerneyS.C.LeeM.B.JenikeM.A. (1998). Masked presentations of emotional facial expressions modulate amygdala activity without explicit knowledge. Journal of Neuroscience, 18, 411–418.
22.
WheatstoneC. (1838). Contributions to the physiology of vision—part the first. On some remarkable and hitherto unobserved phenomena of binocular vision. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 128, 371–394.
23.
WilliamsM.A.MorrisA.P.McGloneF.AbbottD.F.MattingleyJ.B. (2004). Amygdala responses to fearful and happy facial expressions under conditions of binocular suppression. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 2898–2904.
24.
ZhaoL.ChubbC. (2001). The size-tuning of the face-distortion after-effect. Vision Research, 41, 2979–2994.
