Infant Preference for Natural Texture Statistics is Modulated by Contrast Polarity

Face Perception Is Modulated by Sexual Preference

Face perception is mediated by a distributed neural system in the human brain . The response to faces is modulated by cognitive factors such as attention, visual imagery, and emotion ; however, the effects of gender and sexual orientation are currently unknown. We used fMRI to test whether subjects would respond more to their sexually preferred faces and predicted such modulation in the reward ...

Newborns' preference for face-relevant stimuli: effects of contrast polarity.

There is currently no agreement as to how specific or general are the mechanisms underlying newborns' face preferences. We address this issue by manipulating the contrast polarity of schematic and naturalistic face-related images and assessing the preferences of newborns. We find that for both schematic and naturalistic face images, the contrast polarity is important. Newborns did not show a pr...

Infant-Directed Speech Is Modulated by Infant Feedback

Eye contrast polarity is critical for face recognition by infants.

Just as faces share the same basic arrangement of features, with two eyes above a nose above a mouth, human eyes all share the same basic contrast polarity relations, with a sclera lighter than an iris and a pupil, and this is unique among primates. The current study examined whether this bright-dark relationship of sclera to iris plays a critical role in face recognition from early in developm...

Contrast Negation and Texture Synthesis Differentially Disrupt Natural Texture Appearance

Natural textures have characteristic image statistics that make them discriminable from unnatural textures. For example, both contrast negation and texture synthesis alter the appearance of natural textures even though each manipulation preserves some features while disrupting others. Here, we examined the extent to which contrast negation and texture synthesis each introduce or remove critical...