Gonzalez-Franco, M;
Bellido, AI;
Blom, KJ;
Slater, M;
Rodriguez-Fornells, A;
(2016)
The Neurological Traces of Look-Alike Avatars.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
, 10
, Article 392. 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00392.
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Abstract
We designed an observational study where participants (n = 17) were exposed to pictures and look-alike avatars pictures of themselves, a familiar friend or an unfamiliar person. By measuring participants’ brain activity with electroencephalography (EEG), we found face-recognition event related potentials (ERPs) in the visual cortex, around 200–250 ms, to be prominent for the different familiarity levels. A less positive component was found for self-recognized pictures (P200) than pictures of others, showing similar effects in both real faces and look-alike avatars. A rapid adaptation in the same component was found when comparing the neural processing of avatar faces vs. real faces, as if avatars in general were assimilated as real face representations over time. ERP results also showed that in the case of the self-avatar, the P200 component correlated with more complex conscious encodings of self-representation, i.e., the difference in voltage in the P200 between the self-avatar and the self-picture was reduced in participants that felt the avatar looked like them. This study is put into context within the literature of self-recognition and face recognition in the visual cortex. Additionally, the implications of these results on look-alike avatars are discussed both for future virtual reality (VR) and neuroscience studies.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Neurological Traces of Look-Alike Avatars |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00392 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00392 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2016 Gonzalez-Franco, Bellido, Blom, Slater and Rodriguez-Fornells. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Social Sciences, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Neurosciences, Psychology, Neurosciences & Neurology, self-recognition, face-recognition, visual cortex, event related potentials, memory, avatars, INTERSTIMULUS PERCEPTUAL VARIANCE, SELF-FACE RECOGNITION, EVENT-RELATED FMRI, OCCIPITOTEMPORAL CORTEX, BRAIN POTENTIALS, ERP EVIDENCE, RACE, FAMILIAR, N170, REPRESENTATIONS |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1514876 |
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