Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt principles provide a framework for understanding how humans perceive objects as unified wholes within their context. These principles are essential in explaining the cognitive processes that make sense of complex visual stimuli by organizing them into coherent groups. One fundamental principle is proximity, which posits that objects located close to each other are perceived as a collective group. For instance, when dots are positioned near one another, the visual system interprets them...

Visual Agnosia

Visual Agnosia

Visual agnosia is a condition characterized by the inability to recognize visually presented objects despite having normal vision. For instance, a person with visual agnosia can describe the shape and color of an object but cannot identify or name it. This impairment does not affect their visual field, acuity, color vision, brightness discrimination, language, or memory. An example of this condition in a social setting is someone at a dinner party asking for "that silver thing with a round end"...

Perceptual Constancy

Perceptual Constancy

Perceptual constancy is the ability to recognize that objects remain consistent and unchanged even when their appearance varies due to changes in sensory input. There are four main types of perceptual constancy: size constancy, shape constancy, color constancy, and brightness constancy.
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is the inability to recognize faces. In severe cases, individuals with prosopagnosia may not recognize close family members, including parents and spouses, by their faces. For instance, someone with prosopagnosia might walk past their child in a crowd, only realizing their mistake upon noticing their child's distinctive backpack or favorite jacket. Prosopagnosia specifically impairs facial recognition, while the recognition of other objects or...

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

Charles Darwin proposed that facial expressions are an evolutionary adaptation for communication. He argued that these expressions are not influenced by culture but are universal across species. For example, a snarling expression with exposed teeth signals a threat in many animals, including humans. Darwin also suggested that displaying an emotion can intensify the feeling. Smiling, for example, could enhance one's sense of happiness. This idea laid the foundation for understanding the role of...

Major Somatic Sensory Pathways

Major Somatic Sensory Pathways

Sensory impulses related to touch, pressure, vibration, and proprioception from various body parts, such as the limbs, trunk, neck, and posterior head, travel to the cerebral cortex through the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway. The pathway’s name derives from the two white-matter tracts that convey the impulses: the spinal cord's posterior column and the brainstem's medial lemniscus. First-order sensory neurons extend their axons into the spinal cord, forming the posterior columns...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Category-selective neural decreases in the human ventral occipito-temporal cortex as defined with intracranial recordings.

NeuroImage·2026

Same author

Horizontal image compression significantly impairs human face identity recognition.

Brain research·2026

Same author

The critical role of the right anterior fusiform gyrus in unfamiliar face identity discrimination.

Brain structure & function·2026

Same author

Effect of Risks, Consequences, and Gravitational Priors on Sensorimotor Coordination: Insights from Weightlessness.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2026

Same author

Objective neural face recognition neuromodulation within a single transcranial direct current stimulation session.

Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior·2026

Same author

Lexical brain responses in 10-year-old children are impaired in dyslexia: An FPVS-EEG study.

Brain and cognition·2026

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 11, 2026

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Published on: April 16, 2014

Face inversion impairs holistic perception: evidence from gaze-contingent stimulation.

Goedele Van Belle¹, Peter De Graef, Karl Verfaillie

¹CESAME & Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS), Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Journal of Vision

|July 10, 2010

Summary

Face recognition is impaired by inversion, but this effect diminishes when perception is limited to one feature. This suggests holistic processing, not local features, drives upright face recognition expertise.

More Related Videos

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Published on: August 22, 2025

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss

Published on: April 11, 2025

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 11, 2026

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Published on: April 16, 2014

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Published on: August 22, 2025

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss

Published on: April 11, 2025

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Visual Perception

Background:

Human face recognition is highly accurate for upright faces.
A 180-degree rotation significantly impairs face recognition performance.
The underlying mechanisms of the face inversion effect are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of holistic versus local processing in the face inversion effect.
To test the hypothesis that inverted faces are processed less holistically.

Main Methods:

Gaze-contingent stimulus presentation was used to control visual perception.
An individual face matching task was employed.
Stimuli were presented with either a gaze-contingent window or a mask covering fixated features.

Main Results:

Face recognition performance was largely unaffected by inversion when perception was restricted to a single feature.
Performance decrements due to inversion were exacerbated when local information was masked.
These findings indicate that holistic processing is crucial for upright face recognition.

Conclusions:

The face inversion effect stems from an impaired ability to process faces holistically when inverted.
Expertise in upright face recognition relies on the capacity for holistic perception.
Local feature analysis is insufficient for recognizing inverted faces effectively.