Looking for a face in the crowd: Fixation-related potentials in an eye-movement visual search task

• Autores: Kaunitz, L.N.; Kamienkowski, J.E.; Varatharajah, A.; Sigman, M.; Quiroga, R.Q.; Ison, M.J.
• Año de publicación: 2014
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Fuente: NeuroImage 2014;89:297-305
• Materia: EEG; Faces; Natural scenes; Oddball; Visual search; adult; article; cognition; controlled study; electroencephalogram; event related potential; eye fixation; eye movement; eye tracking; female; human; human experiment; male; neuroscience; normal human; priority journal; saccadic eye movement; Article; electroencephalography; eye tracking; latent period; task performance; visual discrimination; visual information; visual masking; visual stimulation; EEG; Faces; Natural scenes; Oddball; Visual search; Adult; Brain; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials, Visual; Face; Female; Fixation, Ocular; Humans; Male; Photic Stimulation; Saccades; Visual Perception; Young Adult
• Institución: Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales

Despite the compelling contribution of the study of event related potentials (ERPs) and eye movements to cognitive neuroscience, these two approaches have largely evolved independently. We designed an eye-movement visual search paradigm that allowed us to concurrently record EEG and eye movements while subjects were asked to find a hidden target face in a crowded scene with distractor faces. Fixation event-related potentials (fERPs) to target and distractor stimuli showed the emergence of robust sensory components associated with the perception of stimuli and cognitive components associated with the detection of target faces. We compared those components with the ones obtained in a control task at fixation: qualitative similarities as well as differences in terms of scalp topography and latency emerged between the two. By using single trial analyses, fixations to target and distractors could be decoded from the EEG signals above chance level in 11 out of 12 subjects. Our results show that EEG signatures related to cognitive behavior develop across spatially unconstrained exploration of natural scenes and provide a first step towards understanding the mechanisms of target detection during natural search. © 2013 The Authors.
Fil:Kamienkowski, J.E. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina.
Fil:Sigman, M. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina.
Fil:Ison, M.J. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina.