Male Attentional Bias for Female Faces

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Male Attentional Bias for Female Faces Yuka Okazaki1*, Arman Abrahamyan2, Catherine Stevens3 and Andreas A. Ioannides4 1 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Netherlands 2 The University of Sydney, Australia 3 University of Western Sydney, Australia 4 AAI Scientific Cultural Services Ltd., Lab. for Human Brain Dynamics, Cyprus Under conditions of inattention or deficits in orienting attention, special classes of stimuli (e.g. faces, bodies) are more likely to be perceived than other stimuli. This suggests that biologically salient visual stimuli automatically recruit attention, even when they are task-irrelevant or ignored. Here we report results from a behavioral experiment with female and male subjects and two magnetoencephalography (MEG) experiments with male subjects only, in which we investigated attentional capture with face and hand stimuli. In both the behavioral and MEG experiments, subjects were required to count the number of gender-specific targets from either face or hand categories within a block of stimuli. In the behavioral experiment, we found that male subjects were significantly more accurate in response to female than male face target blocks. There was no corresponding effect found in response to hand target blocks. Female subjects did not show a gender-based difference in response to face or hand target blocks. MEG results indicated that the male subjects’ responses to face stimuli in primary visual cortex (V1) and the face-selective part of the fusiform gyrus (FG) were reduced when male face stimuli were not relevant to the task, whereas female faces maintained a strong response in these areas in both task-relevant and task-irrelevant conditions. These results suggest that within the male brain, female face stimuli are more resilient to suppression than male faces, once attention is drawn to the part of the visual field where the face appears. Conference: Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism , Dubrovnik, Croatia, 28 Mar - 1 Apr, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Neurocognition and Functional Connectivity Citation: Okazaki Y, Abrahamyan A, Stevens C and Ioannides AA (2010). Male Attentional Bias for Female Faces. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.06.00358 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 07 Apr 2010; Published Online: 07 Apr 2010. * Correspondence: Yuka Okazaki, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, Netherlands, y.okazaki@fcdonders.ru.nl Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Yuka Okazaki Arman Abrahamyan Catherine Stevens Andreas A Ioannides Google Yuka Okazaki Arman Abrahamyan Catherine Stevens Andreas A Ioannides Google Scholar Yuka Okazaki Arman Abrahamyan Catherine Stevens Andreas A Ioannides PubMed Yuka Okazaki Arman Abrahamyan Catherine Stevens Andreas A Ioannides Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.