Andreas Lueschow

MEG/EEG sources of the 170-ms response to faces are co-localized in the fusiform gyrus.

The 170-ms electrophysiological processing stage (N170 in EEG, M170 in MEG) is considered an important computational step in face processing. Hence its neuronal sources have been modelled in several studies. The current study aimed to specify the relation of the dipolar sources underlying N170 and M170. Whole head EEG and MEG were measured simultaneously during the presentation of unfamiliar faces. An Independent Component Analysis (ICA) was applied to the data prior to localization. N170 and M170 were then modelled with a pair of dipoles in a four-shell ellipse (EEG)/homogeneous sphere (MEG) arranged symmetrically across midline. The dipole locations were projected onto the individual structural MR brain images. Dipoles were localized in fusiform gyri in ten out of eleven individuals for EEG and in seven out of eleven for MEG. N170 and M170 were co-localized in the fusiform gyrus in six individuals. The ICA shifted some of the single-subject dipoles up from cerebellum to fusiform gyrus mainly due to the removal of cardiac activity. The group mean dipole locations were also found in posterior fusiform gyri, and did not differ significantly between EEG and MEG. The result was replicated in a repeated measurement 3 months later.

Cardiac artifact subspace identification and elimination in cognitive MEG data using time-delayed decorrelation

To reduce physiological artifacts in magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and electroencephalographic recordings, a number of methods have been applied in the past such as principal component analysis, signal-space projection, regression using secondary information, and independent component analysis. This method has become popular as it does not have constraints such as orthogonality between artifact and signal or the need for a priori information. Applying the time-delayed decorrelation algorithm to raw data from a visual stimulation MEG experiment, we show that several of the independent components can be attributed to the cardiac artifact. Calculating an average cardiac activity shows that physiologically different excitation states of the heart produce similar field distributions in the MEG sensor system. This is equivalent to differing spectral properties of cardiac field distributions in the raw data. As a consequence, the algorithm combines, e.g., the R peak and the T wave of the cardiac cycle into a single component and the one-to-one assignment of each independent component with a physiological source is not justified in this case. To improve the signal quality of visually evoked fields, the multidimensional cardiac artifact subspace is suppressed from the data. To assess the preservation of the evoked signal after artifact suppression, a geometrical and a temporal measure are introduced. The suppression of cardiac and a wave artifacts allows, in our experimental setting, the reduction of the number of epochs to one half while preserving the visually evoked signal.

Faces as Objects of Non-Expertise: Processing of Thatcherised Faces in Congenital Prosopagnosia

Congenital prosopagnosia (cPA) is a severe disorder in recognising familiar faces, a human characteristic that is presumably innate, without any macro-spatial brain anomalies. Following the idea that cPA is based on deficits of configural face processing, we used a speeded grotesqueness decision task with thatcherised faces, since the Thatcher illusion can serve as a test of configural disruption (Lewis and Johnston, 1997 Perception 26 225–227). The time needed to report the grotesqueness of a face in relation to orientation showed dissociate patterns between a group of fourteen people with cPA and a group of matched controls: whereas the RTs of controls followed a strong sigmoid function depending on rotation from the upright orientation, the RTs of people with cPA showed a much weaker sigmoid trend approaching a linear function. The latter result is interpreted as a diagnostic sign of impaired configural processing, being the primary cause of the absence of ‘face expertise’ in prosopagnosia.

Sex-differences of face coding: evidence from larger right hemispheric M170 in men and dipole source modelling.

The processing of faces relies on a specialized neural system comprising bilateral cortical structures with a dominance of the right hemisphere. However, due to inconsistencies of earlier findings as well as more recent results such functional lateralization has become a topic of discussion. In particular, studies employing behavioural tasks and electrophysiological methods indicate a dominance of the right hemisphere during face perception only in men whereas women exhibit symmetric and bilateral face processing. The aim of this study was to further investigate such sex differences in hemispheric processing of personally familiar and opposite-sex faces using whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG). We found a right-lateralized M170-component in occipito-temporal sensor clusters in men as opposed to a bilateral response in women. Furthermore, the same pattern was obtained in performing dipole localization and determining dipole strength in the M170-timewindow. These results suggest asymmetric involvement of face-responsive neural structures in men and allow to ascribe this asymmetry to the fusiform gyrus. This specifies findings from previous investigations employing event-related potentials (ERP) and LORETA reconstruction methods yielding rather extended bilateral activations showing left asymmetry in women and right lateralization in men. We discuss our finding of an asymmetric fusiform activation pattern in men in terms of holistic face processing during face evaluation and sex differences with regard to visual strategies in general and interest for opposite faces in special. Taken together the pattern of hemispheric specialization observed here yields new insights into sex differences in face perception and entails further questions about interactions between biological sex, psychological gender and influences that might be stimulus-driven or task dependent.

The 170ms Response to Faces as Measured by MEG (M170) Is Consistently Altered in Congenital Prosopagnosia

Modularity of face processing is still a controversial issue. Congenital prosopagnosia (cPA), a selective and lifelong impairment in familiar face recognition without evidence of an acquired cerebral lesion, offers a unique opportunity to support this fundamental hypothesis. However, in spite of the pronounced behavioural impairment, identification of a functionally relevant neural alteration in congenital prosopagnosia by electrophysiogical methods has not been achieved so far. Here we show that persons with congenital prosopagnosia can be distinguished as a group from unimpaired persons using magnetoencephalography. Early face-selective MEG-responses in the range of 140 to 200ms (the M170) showed prolonged latency and decreased amplitude whereas responses to another category (houses) were indistinguishable between subjects with congenital prosopagnosia and unimpaired controls. Latency and amplitude of face-selective EEG responses (the N170) which were simultaneously recorded were statistically indistinguishable between subjects with cPA and healthy controls which resolves heterogeneous and partly conflicting results from existing studies. The complementary analysis of categorical differences (evoked activity to faces minus evoked activity to houses) revealed that the early part of the 170ms response to faces is altered in subjects with cPA. This finding can be adequately explained in a common framework of holistic and part-based face processing. Whereas a significant brain-behaviour correlation of face recognition performance and the size of the M170 amplitude is found in controls a corresponding correlation is not seen in subjects with cPA. This indicates functional relevance of the alteration found for the 170ms response to faces in cPA and pinpoints the impairment of face processing to early perceptual stages.

BOiS—Berlin Object in Scene Database: Controlled Photographic Images for Visual Search Experiments with Quantified Contextual Priors

Photographic stimuli are often used for studying human perception. To faithfully represent our natural viewing environment, these stimuli should be free of potential artifacts. If stimulus material for scientific experiments is generated from photographs that were created for a different purpose, such as advertisement or art, the scene layout and focal depth might not be typical for our visual world. For instance in advertising photos, particular objects are often centered and focused. In visual search experiments, this can lead to the so-called central viewing bias and an unwanted pre-segmentation of focused objects (Wichmann et al., 2010). Also the photographic process itself can result in artifacts, such as optical, color and geometric distortions, or introduce noise. Furthermore, some image compression methods introduce artifacts that may influence human viewing behavior. In some studies, objects are pasted into scenes using graphics editing. In this case inconsistencies in color, shading or lighting between the object and the local scene background could lead to deviations from natural viewing behavior. In order to meet the needs for publicly available stimulus material in which these artifacts are avoided, we introduce in this paper the BOiS—Berlin Object in Scene database, which provides controlled photographic stimulus material for the assessment of human visual search behavior under natural conditions. The BOiS database comprises high-resolution photographs of 130 cluttered scenes. In each scene, one particular object was chosen as search target. The scene was then photographed three times: with the target object at an expected location, at an unexpected location, or absent. Moreover, the database contains 240 different views of each target object in front of a black background. These images provide different visual cues of the target before the search is initiated. All photos were taken under controlled conditions with respect to photographic parameters and layout and were corrected for optical distortions. The BOiS database allows investigating the top-down influence of scene context, by providing contextual prior maps of each scene that quantify peoples expectations to find the target object at a particular location. These maps were obtained by averaging the individual expectations of 10 subjects and can be used to model context effects on the search process. Last not least, the database includes segmentation masks of each target object in the two corresponding scene images, as well as a list of semantic information on the target object, the scene, and the two chosen locations. Moreover, we provide bottom-up saliency measures and contextual prior values at the two target object locations. While originally aimed at visual search, our database can also provide stimuli for experiments on scene viewing and object recognition, or serve as test environment for computer vision algorithms.

Dysfunctional action control as a specific feature of Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterised by motor deficits as well as cognitive alterations, particularly concerning frontal lobe control. Here, we were interested in whether executive function is abnormal already early in PD, as well as whether this dysfunction worsens as a part of the dementia in PD. The following groups engaged in tasks addressing action control: PD patients with mild and advanced motor symptoms (aPD) without dementia, PD patients with dementia (PDD), patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and healthy subjects (CON). Subjects either had to perform or inhibit button presses upon go and no-go cues, respectively. These cues were preceded by pre-cues, either randomly instructive of right or left hand preparation (switch condition), or repetitively instructive for one side only (non-switch condition). PDD and aPD omitted more go responses than CON. Furthermore, PDD disproportionally committed failures upon no-go cues compared to CON. In the non-switch condition, PDD performed worse than AD, whose deficits increased to the level of PDD in the switch condition. Over all PD patients, task performance correlated with disease severity. Under the switch condition, task performance was low in both PDD and AD. In the non-switch condition, this also held true for advanced PD patients (with and without dementia), but not for AD. Thus, the deficits evident in PDD appear to develop from imbalanced inhibitory-to-excitatory action control generally inherent to PD. These results specify the concept of dysexecution in PD and differentiate the cognitive profile of PDD from that of AD patients.

Both early (M/N170) and later (250–650 ms) face-related activity are localized in fusiform gyrus for simultaneously acquired MEG and EEG data

Both early (M/N170) and later (250–650 ms) face-related activity are localized in fusiform gyrus for simultaneously acquired MEG and EEG data—I. Deffke , T. Sander , W. Sommer , J. Heidenreich , L. Trahms , G. Curio , A. Lueschow 1 ( Abt. f. Neurologie, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, 2 Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Berlin, 3 Biologische Psychologie, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, 4 Abt. f. Radiologie, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Berlin)

Phenotypic Variability in Autosomal Dominant Familial Alzheimer Disease due to the S170F Mutation of Presenilin-1

Background: In rare cases, patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) present at an early age and with a family history suggestive of an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance. Mutations of the presenilin-1 (PSEN1) gene are the most common causes of dementia in these patients. Early-onset and particularly familial AD patients frequently present with variable non-amnestic cognitive symptoms such as visual, language or behavioural changes as well as non-cognitive, e.g. motor, symptoms. Objective: To investigate the phenotypic variability in carriers of the PSEN1 S170F mutation. Methods: We report a family with 4 patients carrying the S170F mutation of whom 2 underwent detailed clinical examinations. We discuss our current findings in the context of previously reported S170F cases. Results: The clinical phenotype was consistent regarding initial memory impairment and early onset in the late twenties found in all S170F patients. There were frequent non-amnestic cognitive changes and, at early stages of the disease, indications of a more pronounced disturbance of visuospatial abilities as compared to face and object recognition. Non-cognitive symptoms most often included myoclonus and cerebellar ataxia. A review of the available case reports indicates some phenotypic variability associated with the S170F mutation including different constellations of symptoms such as parkinsonism and delusions. Conclusion: The variable clinical findings associated with the S170F mutation highlight the relevance of atypical phenotypes in the context of research and under a clinical perspective. CSF sampling and detection of Aβ species may be essential to indicate AD pathology in unclear cases presenting with cognitive and motor symptoms at a younger age.

A combination of electrophysiological and behavioural data as objective measure of the impairment in congenital prosopagnosia

Recently a form of prosopagnosia has attracted attention that is not accompanied by any discernible brain lesion. Because subjects complain a lifelong impairment and because a familial clustering has been reported this condition has been termed congenital prosopagnosia (cPA) although sensu stricto ‘‘congenital’’ requires the molecular establishment of a genetic basis. In the absence of such determination of this neuropsychological condition as an entity on its own it is necessary to aim at a delineation by neuroimaging and behavioural data. In 14 subjects with cPA and 19 normals (all screened by a specially developed questionnaire) evoked responses were measured by simultaneous EEG and MEG recording in a viewing task with a sequence of faces and houses. A double dissociation between methodology and stimulus category was revealed: (i) In the cPA group, only MEG, but not EEG, showed an M170 (a component that has been linked to structural encoding of faces and to intercategorical discrimination) that was significantly reduced over the right hemisphere (t = 2.49; p = 0.019) and delayed over the left hemisphere (t = 2.78; p = 0.01). This asymmetry between hemispheres is in line with findings which attribute different functional roles to right and left occipitotemporal cortex in face processing. (ii) The M170 for houses was not altered, suggesting that the deficit is restricted to a face processing system. Additional analysis with accuracy data from three basic tests (face-familiarity, face recognition, face imagery) revealed a significantly negative correlation (r = 0.48; p = 0.047) between hit rate and latency of M170 over the left hemisphere for subjects with cPA only. This suggests a link between strength of impairment as measured behaviourally and MEG-correlates of face processing in cPA. In summary electrophysiological measures alone as well as their combination with behavioural measures offer an objective criterion to dissociate cPA from normal face processing.