Abstract
Saliency historically refers to the bottom-up visual properties of an object that automatically drive attention. It is an ordinal property that depends on the relative saliency of one object with respect to others in the scene. Simple examples are a red spot on a green background, a horizontal bar among vertical bars, or a sudden onset of motion. Researchers have introduced the idea of a saliency map, an abstract and featureless map of the ‘winners’ of attention competition, to model the dynamics of visual attention. The standard saliency map involves channels like color, orientation, size, shape, movement or unique onset. But how do complex stimuli, especially stimuli with social meaning such as faces, pop out and attract attention? Suppose you are attending a big party: your attention might be captured by someone in a fancy dress, someone looking at you, someone who is attractive, familiar, or distinctive in some way. This happens essentially automatically, and encompasses a huge number of different stimuli that are all competing for your attention. What determines which is the most salient, and how can we best measure this?
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adams RB, Kleck RE (2003) Perceived gaze direction and the processing of facial displays of emotion. Psychol Sci 14:644–647
Adolphs R (2008) Fear, faces, and the human amygdala. Curr Opin Neurobiol 18:166–172
Adolphs R (2010) What does the amygdala contribute to social cognition? Ann NY Acad Sci 1191:42–61
Adolphs R, Baron-Cohen S, Tranel D (2002) impaired recognition of social emotions following amygdala damage. J Cogn Neurosci 14:1264–1274
Adolphs R, Gosselin F, Buchanan TW, Tranel D, Schyns P, Damasio AR (2005) A mechanism for impaired fear recognition after amygdala damage. Nature 433:68–72
Adolphs R, Sears L, Piven J (2001) Abnormal processing of social information from faces in autism. J Cogn Neurosci 13:232–240
Adolphs R, Tranel D, Damasio AR (1998) The human amygdala in social judgment. Nature 393:470–474
Adolphs R, Tranel D, Damasio H, Damasio A (1994) Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala. Nature 372:669–672
Adolphs R, Tranel D, Hamann S, Young AW, Calder AJ, Phelps EA, Anderson A, Lee GP, Damasio AR (1999) Recognition of facial emotion in nine individuals with bilateral amygdala damage. Neuropsychologia 37:1111–1117
Akiyama T, Kato M, Muramatsu T, Saito F, Umeda S, Kashima H (2006) Gaze but not arrows: a dissociative impairment after right superior temporal gyrus damage. Neuropsychologia 44:1804–1810
Amaral DG, Behniea H, Kelly JL (2003) Topographic organization of projections from the amygdala to the visual cortex in the macaque monkey. Neuroscience 118:1099–1120
Amaral DG, Schumann CM, Nordahl CW (2008) Neuroanatomy of autism. Trends Neurosci 31:137–145
Anderson BA, Laurent PA, Yantis S (2011) Value-driven attentional capture. Proc Natl Acad Sci
Anderson JR, Sallaberry P, Barbier H (1995) Use of experimenter-given cues during object-choice tasks by capuchin monkeys. Anim Behav 49:201–208
Anderson JS, Druzgal TJ, Froehlich A, DuBray MB, Lange N, Alexander AL, Abildskov T, Nielsen JA, Cariello AN, Cooperrider JR, Bigler ED, Lainhart JE (2010) Decreased Interhemispheric Functional Connectivity in Autism. Cerebral Cortex
Arcizet F, Mirpour K, Bisley JW (2011) A pure salience response in posterior parietal cortex. Cereb Cortex 21:2498–2506
Argyle M, Ingham R, Alkema F, McCallin M (1973) The different functions of gaze. Semiotica, 7:19
Aviezer H, Trope Y, Todorov A (2012) Body cues, not facial expressions, discriminate between intense positive and negative emotions. Science 338:1225–1229
Bagshaw MH, Mackworth NH, Pribram KH (1972) The effect of resections of the inferotemporal cortex or the amygdala on visual orienting and habituation. Neuropsychologia 10:153–162
Baron-Cohen S, Ring HA, Bullmore ET, Wheelwright S, Ashwin C, Williams SCR (2000) The amygdala theory of autism. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 24:355–364
Basso MA, Wurtz RH (2002) Neuronal activity in substantia nigra pars reticulata during target selection. J Neurosci 22:1883–1894
Batki A, Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S, Connellan J, Ahluwalia J (2000) Is there an innate gaze module? Evidence from human neonates. Infant Behav Dev 23:223–229
Bauman M, Kemper TL (1985) Histoanatomic observations of the brain in early infantile autism. Neurology 35:866–874
Baxter MG, Murray EA (2002) The amygdala and reward. Nat Rev Neurosci 3:563–573
Baxter MG, Parker A, Lindner CCC, Izquierdo AD, Murray EA (2000) Control of response selection by reinforcer value requires interaction of amygdala and orbital prefrontal cortex. J Neurosci 20:4311–4319
Bechara A, Tranel D, Damasio H, Adolphs R, Rockland C, Damasio A (1995) Double dissociation of conditioning and declarative knowledge relative to the amygdala and hippocampus in humans. Science 269:1115–1118
Becker B, Mihov Y, Scheele D, Kendrick KM, Feinstein JS, Matusch A, Aydin M, Reich H, Urbach H, Oros-Peusquens A-M, Shah NJ, Kunz WS, Schlaepfer TE, Zilles K, Maier W, Hurlemann R (2012) Fear processing and social networking in the absence of a functional amygdala. Biol Psychiatry 72:70–77
Bermudez MA, Gobel C, Schultz W (2012) Sensitivity to temporal reward structure in amygdala neurons. Curr Biol CB 22:1839–1844
Berridge KC, Robinson TE (1998) What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience? Brain Res Rev 28:309–369
Bichot NP, Rossi AF, Desimone R (2005) Parallel and serial neural mechanisms for visual search in macaque area V4. Science 308:529–534
Blair IV, Judd CM, Chapleau KM (2004) The influence of afrocentric facial features in criminal sentencing. Psychol Sci 15:674–679
Blakemore S-J, Decety J (2001) From the perception of action to the understanding of intention. Nat Rev Neurosci 2:561–567
Brothers L (1990) The social brain: a project for integrating primate behavior and neurophysiology in a new domain. Concepts Neurosci 1:27–51
Burrows BE, Moore T (2009) Influence and limitations of popout in the selection of salient visual stimuli by area V4 neurons. J Neurosci 29:15169–15177
Byrnit J (2009) Gorillas’ (Gorilla gorilla) use of experimenter-given manual and facial cues in an object-choice task. Anim Cogn 12:401–404
Campbell R, Heywood CA, Cowey A, Regard M, Landis T (1990) Sensitivity to eye gaze in prosopagnosic patients and monkeys with superior temporal sulcus ablation. Neuropsychologia 28:1123–1142
Carlin JD, Calder AJ, Kriegeskorte N, Nili H, Rowe JB (2011) A head view-invariant representation of gaze direction in anterior superior temporal sulcus. Curr Biol CB 21:1817–1821
Chelazzi L, Miller EK, Duncan J, Desimone R (1993) A neural basis for visual search in inferior temporal cortex. Nature 363:345–347
Constantinidis C, Steinmetz MA (2001) Neuronal responses in area 7a to multiple-stimulus displays: i. neurons encode the location of the salient stimulus. Cereb Cortex 11:581–591
Dalton KM, Nacewicz BM, Alexander AL, Davidson RJ (2007) Gaze-fixation, brain activation, and amygdala volume in unaffected siblings of individuals with autism. Biol Psychiatry 61:512–520
Dalton KM, Nacewicz BM, Johnstone T, Schaefer HS, Gernsbacher MA, Goldsmith HH, Alexander AL, Davidson RJ (2005) Gaze fixation and the neural circuitry of face processing in autism. Nat Neurosci 8:519–526
Dawson G, Webb SJ, McPartland J (2005) Understanding the nature of face processing impairment in autism: insights from behavioral and electrophysiological studies. Dev Neuropsychol 27:403–424
Desimone R, Gross CG (1979) Visual areas in the temporal cortex of the macaque. Brain Res 178:363–380
DSM-5 (2013) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5. American Psychiatric Association
Dunbar RIM (2010) The social role of touch in humans and primates: behavioural function and neurobiological mechanisms. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 34:260–268
Ecker C, Suckling J, Deoni SC, Lombardo MV, Bullmore ET, Baron-Cohen S, Catani M, Jezzard P, Barnes A, Bailey AJ, Williams SC, Murphy DGM (2012) Brain anatomy and its relationship to behavior in adults with autism spectrum disorder: a multicenter magnetic resonance imaging study. Arch Gen Psychiatry 69:195–209
Emery NJ, Capitanio JP, Mason WA, Machado CJ, Mendoza SP, Amaral DG (2001) The effects of bilateral lesions of the amygdala on dyadic social interactions in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Behav Neurosci 115:515–544
Emery NJ, Lorincz EN, Perrett DI, Oram MW, Baker CI (1997) Gaze following and joint attention in Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). J Comp Psychol 111:286–293
Farran EK, Branson A, King BJ (2011) Visual search for basic emotional expressions in autism; impaired processing of anger, fear and sadness, but a typical happy face advantage. Res Autism Spectrum Disord 5:455–462
Field T (2003) Touch. MIT Press, Cambridge
Fitzgerald DA, Angstadt M, Jelsone LM, Nathan PJ, Phan KL (2006) Beyond threat: Amygdala reactivity across multiple expressions of facial affect. NeuroImage 30:1441–1448
Freese JL, Amaral DG (2006) Synaptic organization of projections from the amygdala to visual cortical areas TE and V1 in the macaque monkey. J Comp Neurol 496:655–667
Friesen CK, Kingstone A (1998) The eyes have it! Reflexive orienting is triggered by nonpredictive gaze. Psychon Bull Rev 5:490–495
Gallace A, Spence C (2010) The science of interpersonal touch: an overview. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 34:246–259
Gamer M, Büchel C (2009) Amygdala activation predicts gaze toward fearful eyes. J Neurosci 29:9123–9126
Gazzola V, Spezio ML, Etzel JA, Castelli F, Adolphs R, Keysers C (2012) Primary somatosensory cortex discriminates affective significance in social touch. Proc Natl Acad Sci
Geschwind DH, Levitt P (2007) Autism spectrum disorders: developmental disconnection syndromes. Curr Opin Neurobiol 17:103–111
Ghashghaei HT, Barbas H (2002) Pathways for emotion: interactions of prefrontal and anterior temporal pathways in the amygdala of the rhesus monkey. Neuroscience 115:1261–1279
Gothard KM, Battaglia FP, Erickson CA, Spitler KM, Amaral DG (2007) Neural responses to facial expression and face identity in the monkey amygdala. J Neurophysiol 97:1671–1683
Gottlieb JP, Kusunoki M, Goldberg ME (1998) The representation of visual salience in monkey parietal cortex. Nature 391:481–484
Gotts SJ, Simmons WK, Milbury LA, Wallace GL, Cox RW, Martin A (2012) Fractionation of social brain circuits in autism spectrum disorders. Brain 135:2711–2725
Grabenhorst F, Hernadi I, Schultz W (2012) Prediction of economic choice by primate amygdala neurons. Proc Natl Acad Sci
Grant EC, Mackintosh JH (1963) A comparison of the social postures of some common laboratory rodents. Behaviour 21:246–259
Gross CG (1994) How inferior temporal cortex became a visual area. Cereb Cortex 4:455–469
Hadj-Bouziane F, Liu N, Bell AH, Gothard KM, Luh W-M, Tootell RBH, Murray EA, Ungerleider LG (2012) Amygdala lesions disrupt modulation of functional MRI activity evoked by facial expression in the monkey inferior temporal cortex. Proc Natl Acad Sci 109:E3640–E3648
Hall ET (1966) The hidden dimension. Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y
Happe F (2003) Cognition in autism: one deficit or many? Novartis Found Symp 251:198–207
Happe F, Ronald A, Plomin R (2006) Time to give up on a single explanation for autism. Nat Neurosci 9:1218–1220
Hariri AR, Mattay VS, Tessitore A, Kolachana B, Fera F, Goldman D, Egan MF, Weinberger DR (2002) Serotonin transporter genetic variation and the response of the human amygdala. Science 297:400–403
Harms M, Martin A, Wallace G (2010) Facial emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Neuropsychol Rev 20:290–322
Herry C, Bach DR, Esposito F, Di Salle F, Perrig WJ, Scheffler K, Luthi A, Seifritz E (2007) Processing of temporal unpredictability in human and animal amygdala. J Neurosci 27:5958–5966
Hickey C, Chelazzi L, Theeuwes J (2010) Reward changes salience in human vision via the anterior cingulate. J Neurosci 30:11096–11103
Hickey C, van Zoest W (2012) Reward creates oculomotor salience. Curr Biol 22:R219–R220
Hietanen J (2002) Social attention orienting integrates visual information from head and body orientation. Psychol Res 66:174–179
Hietanen JK (1999) Does your gaze direction and head orientation shift my visual attention? NeuroRep Rapid Commun Neurosci Res 10:3443–3447
Hoffman EA, Haxby JV (2000) Distinct representations of eye gaze and identity in the distributed human neural system for face perception. Nat Neurosci 3:80–84
Hoffman KL, Gothard KM, Schmid MC, Logothetis NK (2007) Facial-expression and gaze-selective responses in the monkey amygdala. Curr Biol CB 17:766–772
Hood BM, Willen JD, Driver J (1998) Adult’s eyes trigger shifts of visual attention in human infants. Psychol Sci 9:131–134
Ikemoto S, Panksepp J (1999) The role of nucleus accumbens dopamine in motivated behavior: a unifying interpretation with special reference to reward-seeking. Brain Res Rev 31:6–41
Ipata AE, Gee AL, Goldberg ME, Bisley JW (2006) Activity in the lateral intraparietal area predicts the goal and latency of saccades in a free-viewing visual search task. J Neurosci 26:3656–3661
Izuma K, Matsumoto K, Camerer CF, Adolphs R (2011) Insensitivity to social reputation in autism. Proc Natl Acad Sci 108:17302–17307
Izuma K, Saito DN, Sadato N (2008) Processing of social and monetary rewards in the human striatum. Neuron 58:284–294
Joseph RM, Keehn B, Connolly C, Wolfe JM, Horowitz TS (2009) Why is visual search superior in autism spectrum disorder? Dev Sci 12:1083–1096
Kanner L (1943) Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nerv Child 2:217–250
Kemner C, van Ewijk L, van Engeland H, Hooge I (2008) Brief report: eye movements during visual search tasks indicate enhanced stimulus discriminability in subjects with PDD. J Autism Dev Disord 38:553–557
Kennedy DP, Adolphs R (2012) Perception of emotions from facial expressions in high-functioning adults with autism. Neuropsychologia 50:3313–3319
Kennedy DP, Glascher J, Tyszka JM, Adolphs R (2009) Personal space regulation by the human amygdala. Nat Neurosci 12:1226–1227
Kingstone A, Friesen CK, Gazzaniga MS (2000) Reflexive joint attention depends on lateralized cortical connections. Psychol Sci 11:159–166
Kingstone A, Tipper C, Ristic J, Ngan E (2004) The eyes have it!: An fMRI investigation. Brain Cogn 55:269–271
Kleinhans NM, Richards T, Johnson LC, Weaver KE, Greenson J, Dawson G, Aylward E (2011) fMRI evidence of neural abnormalities in the subcortical face processing system in ASD. NeuroImage 54:697–704
Kliemann D, Dziobek I, Hatri A, Jr Baudewig, Heekeren HR (2012) The role of the amygdala in atypical gaze on emotional faces in autism spectrum disorders. J Neurosci 32:9469–9476
Kliemann D, Dziobek I, Hatri A, Steimke R, Heekeren HR (2010) Atypical reflexive gaze patterns on emotional faces in autism spectrum disorders. J Neurosci 30:12281–12287
Klin A, Jones W, Schultz R, Volkmar F, Cohen D (2002) Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Arch Gen Psychiatry 59:809–816
Klin A, Lin DJ, Gorrindo P, Ramsay G, Jones W (2009) Two-year-olds with autism orient to non-social contingencies rather than biological motion. Nature 459:257–261
Kling AS, Brothers LA (1992) The amygdala: neurobiological aspects of emotion, memory and mental dysfunction
Kreiman G, Koch C, Fried I (2000) Category-specific visual responses of single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe. Nat Neurosci 3:946–953
LaBar K, LeDoux J, Spencer D, Phelps E (1995) Impaired fear conditioning following unilateral temporal lobectomy in humans. J Neurosci 15:6846–6855
Langton SRH, O’Malley C, Bruce V (1996) Actions speak no louder than words: symmetrical cross-modal interference effects in the processing of verbal and gestural information. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 22:1357–1375
Langton SRH, Watt RJ, Bruce V (2000) Do the eyes have it? Cues to the direction of social attention. Trends Cogn Sci 4:50–59
Law Smith MJ, Montagne B, Perrett DI, Gill M, Gallagher L (2010) Detecting subtle facial emotion recognition deficits in high-functioning Autism using dynamic stimuli of varying intensities. Neuropsychologia 48:2777–2781
LeDoux JE (1993) Emotional memory systems in the brain. Behav Brain Res 58:69–79
Leonard CM, Rolls ET, Wilson FA, Baylis GC (1985) Neurons in the amygdala of the monkey with responses selective for faces. Behav Brain Res 15:159–176
Lewis MH, Bodfish JW (1998) Repetitive behavior disorders in autism. Ment Retard Dev Disabil Res Rev 4:80–89
Lin A, Adolphs R, Rangel A (2012a) Impaired learning of social compared to monetary rewards in autism. Front Neurosci 6
Lin A, Adolphs R, Rangel A (2012b) Social and monetary reward learning engage overlapping neural substrates. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 7:274–281
Lin A, Tsai K, Rangel A, Adolphs R (2012c) Reduced social preferences in autism: evidence from charitable donations. J Neurodev Disord 4:8
Logothetis NK, Sheinberg DL (1996) Visual object recognition. Annu Rev Neurosci 19:577–621
Loken LS, Wessberg J, Morrison I, McGlone F, Olausson H (2009) Coding of pleasant touch by unmyelinated afferents in humans. Nat Neurosci 12:547–548
Malkova L, Gaffan D, Murray EA (1997) Excitotoxic lesions of the amygdala fail to produce impairments in visual learning for auditory secondary reinforcement but interfere with reinforcer devaluation effects in Rhesus monkeys. J Neurosci 17:6011–6020
Mason WA, Capitanio JP, Machado CJ, Mendoza SP, Amaral DG (2006) Amygdalectomy and responsiveness to novelty in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta): generality and individual consistency of effects. Emotion 6:73–81
Mazer JA, Gallant JL (2003) Goal-related activity in V4 during free viewing visual search: evidence for a ventral stream visual salience map. Neuron 40:1241–1250
McGaugh JL (2000) Memory–a century of consolidation. Science 287:248–251
McGaugh JL (2004) The amygdala modulates the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing experiences. Annu Rev Neurosci 27:1–28
McPeek RM, Keller EL (2002) Superior colliculus activity related to concurrent processing of saccade goals in a visual search task. J Neurophysiol 87:1805–1815
McPeek RM, Keller EL (2004) Deficits in saccade target selection after inactivation of superior colliculus. Nat Neurosci 7:757–763
Miklösi A, Polgárdi R, Topál J, Csányi V (1998) Use of experimenter-given cues in dogs. Anim Cogn 1:113–121
Moeller S, Freiwald WA, Tsao DY (2008) Patches with links: a unified system for processing faces in the macaque temporal lobe. Science 320:1355–1359
Mormann F, Dubois J, Kornblith S, Milosavljevic M, Cerf M, Ison M, Tsuchiya N, Kraskov A, Quiroga RQ, Adolphs R, Fried I, Koch C (2011) A category-specific response to animals in the right human amygdala. Nat Neurosci 14:1247–1249
Morris JS, Frith CD, Perrett DI, Rowland D, Young AW, Calder AJ, Dolan RJ (1996) A differential neural response in the human amygdala to fearful and happy facial expressions. Nature 383:812–815
Murthy A, Ray S, Shorter SM, Schall JD, Thompson KG (2009) Neural control of visual search by frontal eye field: effects of unexpected target displacement on visual selection and saccade preparation. J Neurophysiol 101:2485–2506
Nacewicz BM, Dalton KM, Johnstone T, Long M, McAuliff E, Oakes T, Alexander AL, Davidson RJ (2006) Amygdala volume and nonverbal social impairment in adolescent and adult males with autism. Arch Gen Psychiatry 63:1417–1428
Neumann D, Spezio ML, Piven J, Adolphs R (2006) Looking you in the mouth: abnormal gaze in autism resulting from impaired top-down modulation of visual attention. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 1:194–202
Nummenmaa L, Hyönä J, Hietanen JK (2009) I’ll walk this way: eyes reveal the direction of locomotion and make passersby look and go the other way. Psychol Sci 20:1454–1458
O’Riordan M (2000) Superior modulation of activation levels of stimulus representations does not underlie superior discrimination in autism. Cognition 77:81–96
O’Riordan M, Plaisted K (2001) Enhanced discrimination in autism. Q J Exp Psychol A 54:961–979
O’Riordan M, Plaisted K, Driver J, Baron-Cohen S (2001) Superior visual search in autism. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 27:719–730
O’Riordan MA (2004) Superior visual search in adults with autism. Autism 8:229–248
Ogawa T, Komatsu H (2004) Target selection in area V4 during a multidimensional visual search task. J Neurosci 24:6371–6382
Olausson H, Lamarre Y, Backlund H, Morin C, Wallin BG, Starck G, Ekholm S, Strigo I, Worsley K, Vallbo AB, Bushnell MC (2002) Unmyelinated tactile afferents signal touch and project to insular cortex. Nat Neurosci 5:900–904
Oosterhof NN, Todorov A (2008) The functional basis of face evaluation. Proc Natl Acad Sci 105:11087–11092
Osterling J, Dawson G (1994) Early recognition of children with autism: A study of first birthday home videotapes. J Autism Dev Disord 24:247–257
Paton JJ, Belova MA, Morrison SE, Salzman CD (2006) The primate amygdala represents the positive and negative value of visual stimuli during learning. Nature 439:865–870
Paul L, Corsello C, Tranel D, Adolphs R (2010) Does bilateral damage to the human amygdala produce autistic symptoms? J Neurodev Disord 2:165–173
Peignot P, Anderson JR (1999) Use of experimenter-given manual and facial cues by gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) in an object-choice task. J Comp Psychol 113:253–260
Pelphrey K, Sasson N, Reznick JS, Paul G, Goldman B, Piven J (2002) Visual scanning of faces in autism. J Autism Dev Disord 32:249–261
Pelphrey KA, Singerman JD, Allison T, McCarthy G (2003) Brain activation evoked by perception of gaze shifts: the influence of context. Neuropsychologia 41:156–170
Pelphrey KA, Viola RJ, McCarthy G (2004) When strangers pass: processing of mutual and averted social gaze in the superior temporal sulcus. Psychol Sci 15:598–603
Perrett DI, Smith PAJ, Potter DD, Mistlin AJ, Head AS, Milner AD, Jeeves MA (1985) Visual cells in the temporal cortex sensitive to face view and gaze direction. Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 223:293–317
Phelps EA, LeDoux JE (2005) Contributions of the amygdala to emotion processing: from animal models to human behavior. Neuron 48:175–187
Philip RCM, Dauvermann MR, Whalley HC, Baynham K, Lawrie SM, Stanfield AC (2012) A systematic review and meta-analysis of the fMRI investigation of autism spectrum disorders. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 36:901–942
Philip RCM, Whalley HC, Stanfield AC, Sprengelmeyer R, Santos IM, Young AW, Atkinson AP, Calder AJ, Johnstone EC, Lawrie SM, Hall J (2010) Deficits in facial, body movement and vocal emotional processing in autism spectrum disorders. Psychol Med 40:1919–1929
Piech RM, McHugo M, Smith SD, Dukic MS, Van Der Meer J, Abou-Khalil B, Most SB, Zald DH (2011) Attentional capture by emotional stimuli is preserved in patients with amygdala lesions. Neuropsychologia 49:3314–3319
Piech RM, McHugo M, Smith SD, Dukic MS, Van Der Meer J, Abou-Khalil B, Zald DH (2010) Fear-enhanced visual search persists after amygdala lesions. Neuropsychologia 48:3430–3435
Piven J, Arndt S, Bailey J, Havercam S, Andreasen N, Palmer P (1995) An MRI study of brain size in autism. Am J Psychiatry 152:1145–1149
Plaisted K, O’Riordan M, Baron-Cohen S (1998) Enhanced visual search for a conjunctive target in autism: a research note. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 39:777–783
Povinelli DJ, Eddy TJ (1996) Chimpanzees: joint visual attention. Psychol Sci 7:129–135
Puce A, Allison T, Bentin S, Gore JC, McCarthy G (1998) Temporal cortex activation in humans viewing eye and mouth movements. J Neurosci 18:2188–2199
Purcell BA, Weigand PK, Schall JD (2012) Supplementary eye field during visual search: salience, cognitive control, and performance monitoring. J Neurosci 32:10273–10285
Ristic J, Friesen C, Kingstone A (2002) Are eyes special? It depends on how you look at it. Psychon Bull Rev 9:507–513
Rolls E (1984) Neurons in the cortex of the temporal lobe and in the amygdala of the monkey with responses selective for faces. Hum Neurobiol 3:209–222
Rolls ET (2010) The affective and cognitive processing of touch, oral texture, and temperature in the brain. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 34:237–245
Rolls ET, O’Doherty J, Kringelbach ML, Francis S, Bowtell R, McGlone F (2003) Representations of pleasant and painful touch in the human orbitofrontal and cingulate cortices. Cereb Cortex 13:308–317
Roozendaal B, Castello NA, Vedana G, Barsegyan A, McGaugh JL (2008) Noradrenergic activation of the basolateral amygdala modulates consolidation of object recognition memory. Neurobiol Learn Mem 90:576–579
Rosset D, Santos A, Da Fonseca D, Rondan C, Poinson F, Deruelle C (2011) More than just another face in the crowd: Evidence for an angry superiority effect in children with and without autism. Res Autism Spectrum Disord 5:949–956
Rutishauser U, Tudusciuc O, Neumann D, Mamelak AN, Heller AC, Ross IB, Philpott L, Sutherling WW, Adolphs R (2011) Single-unit responses selective for whole faces in the human amygdala. Curr Biol CB 21:1654–1660
Rutishauser U, Tudusciuc O, Wang S, Mamelak AN, Ross IB, Adolphs R (2013) Single-neuron correlates of atypical face processing in autism. Neuron 80:887–899
Sander D, Grandjean D, Pourtois G, Schwartz S, Seghier ML, Scherer KR, Vuilleumier P (2005) Emotion and attention interactions in social cognition: brain regions involved in processing anger prosody. NeuroImage 28:848–858
Sasson N (2006) The development of face processing in autism. J Autism Dev Disord 36:381–394
Sasson NJ, Elison JT, Turner-Brown LM, Dichter GS, Bodfish JW (2011) Brief report: circumscribed attention in young children with autism. J Autism Dev Disord 41:242–247
Sasson NJ, Turner-Brown LM, Holtzclaw TN, Lam KSL, Bodfish JW (2008) Children with autism demonstrate circumscribed attention during passive viewing of complex social and nonsocial picture arrays. Autism Res 1:31–42
Sato W, Okada T, Toichi M (2007) Attentional shift by gaze is triggered without awareness. Exp Brain Res 183:87–94
Sato W, Yoshikawa S, Kochiyama T, Matsumura M (2004) The amygdala processes the emotional significance of facial expressions: an fMRI investigation using the interaction between expression and face direction. NeuroImage 22:1006–1013
Scaife M, Bruner JS (1975) The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant. Nature 253:265–266
Scheumann M, Call J (2004) The use of experimenter-given cues by South African fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus). Anim Cogn 7:224–230
Schirmer A, Teh KS, Wang S, Vijayakumar R, Ching A, Nithianantham D, Escoffier N, Cheok AD (2011) Squeeze me, but don’t tease me: Human and mechanical touch enhance visual attention and emotion discrimination. Soc Neurosci 6:219–230
Schumann CM, Amaral DG (2006) Stereological analysis of amygdala neuron number in autism. J Neurosci 26:7674–7679
Schumann CM, Hamstra J, Goodlin-Jones BL, Lotspeich LJ, Kwon H, Buonocore MH, Lammers CR, Reiss AL, Amaral DG (2004) The amygdala is enlarged in children but not adolescents with autism; the hippocampus is enlarged at all ages. J Neurosci 24:6392–6401
Sheinberg DL, Logothetis NK (2001) Noticing familiar objects in real world scenes: the role of temporal cortical neurons in natural vision. J Neurosci 21:1340–1350
Shen K, Paré M (2007) Neuronal activity in superior colliculus signals both stimulus identity and saccade goals during visual conjunction search. J Vis 7
Shen K, Paré M (2014) Predictive saccade target selection in superior colliculus during visual search. J Neurosci 34:5640–5648
South M, Ozonoff S, McMahon W (2005) Repetitive behavior profiles in asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism. J Autism Dev Disord 35:145–158
Spezio ML, Adolphs R, Hurley RSE, Piven J (2007a) Abnormal use of facial information in high-functioning autism. J Autism Dev Disord 37:929–939
Spezio ML, Adolphs R, Hurley RSE, Piven J (2007b) Analysis of face gaze in autism using “Bubbles”. Neuropsychologia 45:144–151
Tanaka K (1997) Mechanisms of visual object recognition: monkey and human studies. Curr Opin Neurobiol 7:523–529
Thomas NWD, Paré M (2007) Temporal processing of saccade targets in parietal cortex area lip during visual search. J Neurophysiol 97:942–947
Thompson KG, Bichot NP (2005) A visual salience map in the primate frontal eye field. Prog Brain Res 147:249–262
Thompson KG, Hanes DP, Bichot NP, Schall JD (1996) Perceptual and motor processing stages identified in the activity of macaque frontal eye field neurons during visual search. J Neurophysiol 76:4040–4055
Todd RM, Talmi D, Schmitz TW, Susskind J, Anderson AK (2012) Psychophysical and neural evidence for emotion-enhanced perceptual vividness. J Neurosci 32:11201–11212
Todorov A, Mandisodza AN, Goren A, Hall CC (2005) Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science 308:1623–1626
Tolias AS, Moore T, Smirnakis SM, Tehovnik EJ, Siapas AG, Schiller PH (2001) eye movements modulate visual receptive fields of v4 neurons. Neuron 29:757–767
Tsao DY, Freiwald WA, Tootell RBH, Livingstone MS (2006) A cortical region consisting entirely of face-selective cells. Science 311:670–674
Tye KM, Stuber GD, de Ridder B, Bonci A, Janak PH (2008) Rapid strengthening of thalamo-amygdala synapses mediates cue-reward learning. Nature 453:1253–1257
van Boxtel JJA, Lu H (2011) Visual search by action category. J Vis 11
van Boxtel JJA, Lu H (2012) Signature movements lead to efficient search for threatening actions. PLoS ONE 7:e37085
Vuilleumier P (2002) Perceived gaze direction in faces and spatial attention: a study in patients with parietal damage and unilateral neglect. Neuropsychologia 40:1013–1026
Vuilleumier P (2005) How brains beware: neural mechanisms of emotional attention. Trends Cogn Sci 9:585–594
Vuilleumier P, Richardson MP, Armony JL, Driver J, Dolan RJ (2004) Distant influences of amygdala lesion on visual cortical activation during emotional face processing. Nat Neurosci 7:1271–1278
Wallace G, Case L, Harms M, Silvers J, Kenworthy L, Martin A (2011) Diminished sensitivity to sad facial expressions in high functioning autism spectrum disorders is associated with symptomatology and adaptive functioning. J Autism Dev Disord 41:1475–1486
Wang S, Fukuchi M, Koch C, Tsuchiya N (2012a) Spatial attention is attracted in a sustained fashion toward singular points in the optic flow. PLoS ONE 7:e41040
Wang S, Krajbich I, Adolphs R, Tsuchiya N (2012b) The role of risk aversion in non-conscious decision-making. Front Psychol 3
Wang S, Tudusciuc O, Mamelak AN, Ross IB, Adolphs R, Rutishauser U (2014a) Neurons in the human amygdala selective for perceived emotion. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 111:E3110–E3119
Wang S, Xu J, Jiang M, Zhao Q, Hurlemann R, Adolphs R (2014b) Autism spectrum disorder, but not amygdala lesions, impairs social attention in visual search. Neuropsychologia 63:259–274
Wang S, Tsuchiya N, New J, Hurlemann R, Adolphs R (2015) Preferential attention to animals and people is independent of the amygdala. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 10:371–380
Watson KK, Platt ML (2012) Social signals in primate orbitofrontal cortex. Curr Biol CB 22:2268–2273
Willis J, Todorov A (2006) First impressions: making up your mind after a 100-ms exposure to a face. Psychol Sci 17:592–598
Willis ML, Palermo R, Burke D, McGrillen K, Miller L (2010) Orbitofrontal cortex lesions result in abnormal social judgements to emotional faces. Neuropsychologia 48:2182–2187
Wise RA (2004) Dopamine, learning and motivation. Nat Rev Neurosci 5:483–494
Wolfe JM (2012) The rules of guidance in visual search. In: Kundu M et al. (ed) Perception and machine intelligence, vol 7143, pp 1–10. Springer, Heidelberg
Wolfe JM, Horowitz TS (2004) What attributes guide the deployment of visual attention and how do they do it? Nat Rev Neurosci 5:495–501
Yang J, Bellgowan PSF, Martin A (2012) Threat, domain-specificity and the human amygdala. Neuropsychologia 50:2566–2572
Zhang B, Noble PL, Winslow JT, Pine DS, Nelson EE (2012) Amygdala volume predicts patterns of eye fixation in rhesus monkeys. Behav Brain Res 229:433–437
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wang, S., Adolphs, R. (2017). Social Saliency. In: Zhao, Q. (eds) Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision. Cognitive Science and Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0213-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0213-7_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0211-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0213-7
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)