Position-specificity of facial adaptation

We investigated the representation of objects' position at the higher, shape-selective stages of visual processing by testing the position-specificity of the behavioural and neural effects of facial adaptation. Here, we show that facial after-effects evoked by adaptation to both upright and upside-down faces are significantly larger when the adaptor and test faces are presented on the same retinal position than when they are displayed in different hemifields. Our event-related potential recordings revealed that adaptation effects measured on the amplitude of the N170 event-related potential component over the hemisphere that was contralateral to the test face stimulus also show strong position-specificity. These findings suggest that face adaptation effects are only partially translation invariant and facial after-effects measured with peripheral test stimuli primarily reflect the adaptation processes in the contralateral hemisphere.