Neuroscience and psychology, while theorized about for centuries, is a relatively young field of study. In the late 1860’s, psychiatrists could theorize a lot about someone’s mental state but to this date, many psychiatric diagnoses have been reversed based on new criteria and research. Currently, neuroscientists are gaining a lot of information regarding the importance of facial recognition and how it can be affected. While research is still diversifying, currently research is indicating important brain regions and their specific impacts. Explored by Stefania Conte and colleagues are the “Face-sensitive brain responses in the first year of life” and further exploring its importance is Francesca Simion’s “Face perception and processing in early infancy: inborn predispositions and developmental changes”. There exists, however, research on disorders that affect sensitivity to faces. Maggie Guy explores facial recognition trends in children with FXS and autism spectrum disorder in the article “Cortical Source Analysis of the Face Sensitive N290 ERP Component in Infants at High Risk for Autism”. This idea is also explored by Giada Tripoli and colleagues in Schizophrenia research.
Conte and colleagues discuss the importance of the visual pathways and its integration into the cortex being vital to facial recognition. The N290 was found using event related potentials (ERPs) as well as the P1, P400, and Nc. Using infants at 4.5 months and again at 12 months, they aimed to determine what changes at the beginning of life to make more complex recognitions. While the P1 range did not show differences across ages, N290 showed increased amplitude with age, the Nc and P400 were linear increasing but increased at a lower rate than the N290. With interest that the N290 is a precursor to N170 in adults, it was also explored and found that infants show face-processing more so at 9 months for more complicated variety of faces. As for the importance of facial recognition and these parts of the brain, Simion discusses social and evolutionary benefits. In society, facial recognition is vital to determining evolutionarily if someone is a threat and is more about familiary and emotions processing than actual recognition of faces. Studying newbords and facial preference, no brain region was found but there is discussion of symmetry and familiarity playing a role. As also discussed in the neuroscientific studies of racism, this study mentioned the face preferences and processing of other-race faces versus same-race faces. Studies using eye trackers and timing show that children show slower time of making differentiations if the stimuli provided to them includes other-race faces and were quicker to notice differences in same-race faces. They also tended to look longer at the same-race stimuli. Overall, there is a lot that goes into facial recognition and its social importance, and the specialization of face-recognition changes a lot over time based on children’s exposures and experiences with diverse groups of people.
In addition to the development of facial recognition over time, Guy and colleagues explored face sensitivity in children that were at high risk to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). As written in the article as well as lectured about, Guy explains that high risk children were infants with FXS or children with siblings who are diagnosed with ASD (ASIBs). While looking at activation through ERPs, it was determined that the correct brain areas showed higher activation to faces than to objects but it was also determined that ASIBs showed lower levels of activation to faces than children with FXS. When determined that N290 had higher activation, it aligned with higher levels of social-communication impairments. Similarly to this investigation, Tripoli and colleagues investigated risk for schizophrenia and their facial emotion recognition. This study concluded that psychosis symptoms impaired the ability to recognize fear and anger. Overall, facial processing is extremely important to development and evolution. There are differences in physiology that are currently being linked to psychological disorders are are still being researched.
Works Cited
Conte, S., Richards, J. E., Guy, M. W., Xie, W., & Roberts, J. E. (2020). Face-sensitive brain responses in the first year of life. NeuroImage, 211, 116602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116602
Guy, M. W., Richards, J. E., & Roberts, J. E. (2022). Cortical Source Analysis of the Face Sensitive N290 ERP Component in Infants at High Risk for Autism. Brain sciences, 12(9), 1129. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12091129
Simion, F., & Giorgio, E. D. (2015). Face perception and processing in early infancy: inborn predispositions and developmental changes. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 969. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00969
Tripoli, G., Quattrone, D., Ferraro, L., Gayer-Anderson, C., La Cascia, C., La Barbera, D., Sartorio, C., Seminerio, F., Rodriguez, V., Tarricone, I., Berardi, D., Jamain, S., Arango, C., Tortelli, A., Llorca, P.-M., de Haan, L., Velthorst, E., Bobes, J., Bernardo, M., … Murray, G. K. (2022). Facial emotion recognition in psychosis and associations with polygenic risk for schizophrenia: Findings from the Multi-Center EU-GEI Case–Control Study. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 48(5), 1104–1114. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbac022
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