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Updated: Jun 13, 2025

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues
Published on: June 3, 2013
Neural encoding of real world face perception
Arish Alreja1,2,3,4, Michael J Ward4,5, Lisa S Parker6
1Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA.
Abstract:
Social perception unfolds as we freely interact with people around us. We investigated the neural basis of real world face perception using multi electrode intracranial recordings in humans during spontaneous interactions with friends, family, and others. Computational models reconstructed the faces participants looked at during natural interactions, including facial expressions and motion, from brain activity alone. The results highlighted a critical role for the social vision pathway, a network of areas spanning parietal, temporal, and occipital cortex. This network was more sharply tuned to subtle expressions compared to intense expressions, which was confirmed with controlled psychophysical experiments. These findings reveal that the human social vision pathway encodes facial expressions and motion as deviations from a neutral expression prototype during natural social interactions in real life.
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