Social Cognition in Down Syndrome: Face Tuning in Face-Like Non-Face Images.

Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) are widely believed to possess considerable socialization strengths. However, the findings on social cognition capabilities are controversial. In the present study, we investigated whether individuals with DS exhibit shortage in face tuning, one of the indispensable components of social cognition.

Social cognition in autism: Face tuning.

Faces convey valuable information for social cognition, effective interpersonal interaction, and non-verbal communication. Face perception is believed to be atypical in autism, but the origin of this deficit is controversial. Dominant featural face encoding is suggested to be responsible for face tuning scarcity.

Social interaction revealed by motion: dynamics of neuromagnetic gamma activity.

Perception of dispositions of others revealed by movement is an essential ingredient of adaptive daily-life social behavior. Brain imaging points to several brain regions involved in visual processing of social interaction represented by motion of geometric shapes. However, temporal interrelations among these regions remain unknown.

Cortical response to social interaction is affected by gender.

The ability of humans to predict and explain other people's actions is of immense value for adaptive behavior and nonverbal communication. Gender differences are often evident in the comprehension of social signals, but the underlying neurobiological basis for these differences is unclear. Combining visual psychophysics with an analysis of neuromagnetic activity, we assessed gender effects on the induced oscillatory response to visual social interaction revealed by motion.

Separate motion-detecting mechanisms for first- and second-order patterns revealed by rapid forms of visual motion priming and motion aftereffect.

Fast adaptation biases the perceived motion direction of a subsequently presented ambiguous test pattern (R. Kanai & F. A.