Events Calendar

MoBI Seminar: Individual Differences in Face Recognition Abilities

Speaker: Dr. Frédéric Gosselin, Full Professor, Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal

Talk Title: Individual Differences in Face Recognition Abilities

Abstract: Abilities for face recognition vary greatly even among neurologically typical individuals. At one end of the spectrum, developmental prosopagnosics show great difficulty recognizing faces, despite not having sustained any brain injuries. At the other end of the spectrum, super-recognizers easily recognize faces they have not seen in years, even if these faces have physically changed in a substantial manner. Understanding how perceptual mechanisms are linked with individual abilities can offer important and straightforward insights for improving face processing in both individuals with poor face recognition abilities and people whose jobs require strong face processing ability. We recently characterised the brain computations of participants of various face recognition abilities using high-density electroencephalographic signals and a combination of behavioural tests, artificial neural network models, and machine learning analyses. We found that individual face recognition ability can be decoded from brain activity in an extended temporal interval for face and non-face objects. We show that both visual and semantic brain computations contribute to these individual differences.

Biography: Frédéric Gosselin is a Full Professor in the Département de psychologie at Université de Montréal, and, with Dr. Anne Gallagher, the co-founder and co-director of cerebrum. He is a world-leading expert in high-level vision. He is the co-inventor of the Bubbles technique. He has also developed the popular SHINE toolbox for controlling low-level image properties. In his research, he uses a combination of psychophysical, neuropsychological, brain imaging and computational methods. Recently, his work has focused on individual differences in face recognition abilities. Dr. Gosselin is the founder and CEO of Elephant Scientific Consulting Inc.. His company has been advising multinational corporations such as Unilever, Cirque du Soleil and Netflix for 20 years.

Host: Dr. Karim Jerbi, karim.jerbi.udem@gmail.com and Dr. Richard M. Leahy, leahy@sipi.usc.edu

Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99092780975?pwd=aWcydXI1YmFxaXZaQ3VKRHhzOGJqUT09

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99092780975?pwd=aWcydXI1YmFxaXZaQ3VKRHhzOGJqUT09

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher