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This highlights the importance of examining high-level processings in an attempt to thoroughly understand the mechanism underlying our visual perception. For example, it has been shown that mechanisms in the prefrontal cortex contribute to our perception by forming perceptual decisions, that is to statistically evaluate the most likely identity of the perceived object given the accumulating sensory evidence encoded in lower sensory areas ( Gold and Shadlen, 2007 ). On the other hand, it is also clear that high-level mechanisms contribute to visual perception in general. These results seem to be compatible with the interpretation that it was local features rather than Gestalt facial processing that account for the prioritized perception of fearful faces. But importantly, the effect was preserved even when the faces were inverted. (2007) showed that fearful faces resisted continuous flash suppression better than other faces. Although previous studies carefully controlled for low-level physical features such as luminance contrast and spatial frequency, bottom-up processing of local features such as the increased eye white exposure may be sufficient to explain why fearful faces are easier to be seen. Yet, it is unclear if such prioritized perception of fearful faces is merely due to lower-level visual processing. Other studies have shown that fearful faces are more resistant to suppression by visual noise or dichoptic suppression ( Yang et al. For instance, some studies have shown that fearful faces were more likely to be perceived when attention was directed away (e.g. Many studies suggest that fearful face perception is special, in that a fearful face is easier or quicker to be perceived than faces with neutral or other emotional expressions. Together, the results suggest that mechanisms in the prefrontal cortex contribute to making fearful face perception special.įearful face perception, perceptual decision-making, metacognition, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLFPC), voxel-based morphometry (VBM) Introduction Moreover, participants reported higher confidence when they accurately perceived a fearful face, suggesting that fearful faces may have privileged access to consciousness. This effect was stronger among individuals with reduced density in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region linked to perceptual decision-making. Under these conditions, participants showed liberal biases in perceiving a fearful face, in both detection and discrimination tasks. We controlled for lower-level visual processing capacity by titrating luminance contrasts of backward masks, and the emotional intensity of fearful, angry and happy faces. We examined potential biases for fearful face perception at the levels of perceptual decision-making and perceptual confidence. However, it is unclear whether the processing of low-level facial features alone can facilitate such prioritization or whether higher-level mechanisms also contribute. Fearful faces are believed to be prioritized in visual perception.