Brain Mechanisms Of Face Processing And Its Application In Schizophrenia Patients

Face recognition and expression recognition are two important aspects of social life.Face can be recognized easier than other kind stimulus,which is thought to be caused by additional configural processing in face processing.Inversion can cause a loss of configural information,especially to face than non-face discrimination,which leads to a longer reaction time and lower accuracy rate,not only in identification and recognition memory tasks but also in pleasantness ratings and face matching tasks.According to the Holistic/part-based model,this effect is face-specific.However,Perceptual expertise model beilieve that cofigural processing can be obtained by practice,no matter of the stimulus kind.Schizophrenia is a complex disorder which is characterized by marked social dysfunctions,but the neural mechanism under this deficit is still not clear.To investigate whether face-specific perceptual processes are influenced in schizophrenia patients,both the face detection and emotion processing in normal group and schizophrenia patients were assessed by recording the induced power and evoked power of EEG data elicited by faces and non-face presented in upright and upside down orientations.Also,we analysed the evoked and induced power elicited by schemitic happy and sad face.We built a face processing model based on Event-related Potential,Evoked Power and Induced Power,which is characterized by the amplitude and latency of N170 component,the evoked beta power,the evoked alpha power and induced gamma power.We found that healthy adult showed a significant face-special effect,which is characterized by a later latency for non-face and inverted face compared to face.But schizophrenia patients showed an inversion effect of latency for both face and non-face,which revealed a expertise effect.We further supposed that these dysfunction might be caused by mess of high-frequency EEG in schizophrenia patients.