My true face: Unmasking one's own face representation

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Perception

Background:

• While face recognition is widely studied, the metric representation of one's own facial structure remains poorly understood.
• Existing research primarily focuses on visual and haptic face recognition, neglecting the proprioceptive and metric aspects of self-face representation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the metric representation of facial landmarks from a first-person perspective in young adults.
• To understand how proprioception influences the perceived structure and spatial layout of one's own face.

Main Methods:

• Development of a proprioceptive pointing task to accurately locate facial landmarks.
• Data collection involved young adults judging the metric properties of their own facial features from a first-person viewpoint.

Main Results:

• Significant overestimation of facial width across all features, mirroring patterns in somatosensory cortical representation.
• Face length perception was compartmentalized: upper regions underestimated, lower regions overestimated, possibly linked to functionality.
• Facial areas were perceived closer to the body, indicating self-frame of reference influence.
• Asymmetrical representation observed, with an overrepresentation of the right side of the face, linked to handedness and lateralization biases.

Conclusions:

• The metric representation of one's own face is influenced by somatosensory processing, functional demands, and self-referential spatial biases.
• Lateralization effects, particularly in right-handers, contribute to facial asymmetry in self-representation.
• These findings extend beyond the somatosensory homunculus, highlighting the role of experience and functionality in constructing face structural representations.