Self-face and emotional faces-are they alike?

The image of one's own face is a particularly distinctive feature of the self. The self-face differs from other faces not only in respect of its familiarity but also in respect of its subjective emotional significance and saliency. The current study aimed at elucidating similarities/dissimilarities between processing of one's own face and emotional faces: happy faces (based on the self-positive bias) and fearful faces (because of their high perceptual saliency, a feature shared with self-face). Electroencephalogram data were collected in the group of 30 participants who performed a simple detection task. Event-related potential analyses indicated significantly increased P3 and late positive potential amplitudes to the self-face in comparison to all other faces: fearful, happy and neutral. Permutation tests confirmed the differences between the self-face and all three types of other faces for numerous electrode sites and in broad time windows. Representational similarity analysis, in turn, revealed distinct processing of the self-face and did not provide any evidence in favour of similarities between the self-face and emotional (either negative or positive) faces. These findings strongly suggest that the self-face processing do not resemble those of emotional faces, thus implying that prioritized self-referential processing is driven by the subjective relevance of one's own face.

Automated summary

This study revealed significant differences in brain signal response and processing between one's own face and other faces (including fearful, happy, and neutral faces). The results showed distinct processing of self-face compared to emotional faces, indicating that prioritized self-referential processing is driven by subjective relevance.