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Related Concept Videos

Perception01:28

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Perception is a fundamental psychological process that enables individuals to organize, interpret, and consciously experience sensory information. This process is crucial for understanding and interacting with the world around us. It includes both bottom-up and top-down processing, each playing a distinct role in how we perceive our environment.
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Association areas are regions of the cerebral cortex that do not have a specific sensory or motor function. Instead, they integrate and interpret information from various sources to enable higher cognitive processes such as memory, learning, and decision-making. Some key association areas include the following:
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The brain processes sensory information rapidly due to parallel processing, which involves sending data across multiple neural pathways at the same time. This method allows the brain to manage various sensory qualities, such as shapes, colors, movements, and locations, all concurrently. For instance, when observing a forest landscape, the brain simultaneously processes the movement of leaves, the shapes of trees, the depth between them, and the various shades of green. This enables a quick and...
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Vision is the result of light being detected and transduced into neural signals by the retina of the eye. This information is then further analyzed and interpreted by the brain. First, light enters the front of the eye and is focused by the cornea and lens onto the retina—a thin sheet of neural tissue lining the back of the eye. Because of refraction through the convex lens of the eye, images are projected onto the retina upside-down and reversed.
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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...
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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...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 11, 2025

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues
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Human face and gaze perception is highly context specific and involves bottom-up and top-down neural processing.

Mijna Hadders-Algra1

  • 1University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen. Dept. Pediatrics - section Developmental Neurology Groningen, the Netherlands; University of Groningen, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Groningen, the Netherlands.

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
|December 3, 2021
PubMed
Summary

Human perception of face and gaze signals, crucial for social communication, begins prenatally. Processing is context-specific, influenced by culture, and involves distinct neural pathways in the social brain.

Keywords:
AmygdalaCultureFace recognitionFacial expressionGazeJoint attentionPrenatal originRaceSocial brainSubcortexTop-down processing

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Social Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology

Background:

  • Face and gaze signals are fundamental to non-verbal social communication.
  • Understanding their perception and processing is key to comprehending social interaction.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review current knowledge on human perception and processing of face and gaze signals.
  • To highlight key developmental, contextual, and neural aspects.

Main Methods:

  • Literature review synthesizing findings from neuroscience, psychology, and related fields.
  • Analysis of evidence regarding prenatal development, cultural influences, and neural mechanisms.

Main Results:

  • Evidence suggests face perception begins prenatally.
  • Processing of facial identity, expression, and gaze is context-dependent, significantly shaped by culture.
  • Face and gaze processing involves parallel subcortical and cortical pathways within the social brain, including the fusiform gyrus, STS, and mPFC.

Conclusions:

  • Human face and gaze perception is a complex, multifaceted process.
  • It is influenced by early development, cultural context, and intricate neural networks.
  • Further research into these interacting pathways can illuminate social cognition.