TY - JOUR T1 - Neural Representations of Faces are Tuned to Eye Movements JF - The Journal of Neuroscience JO - J. Neurosci. DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2968-18.2019 SP - 2968-18 AU - Lisa Stacchi AU - Meike Ramon AU - Junpeng Lao AU - Roberto Caldara Y1 - 2019/03/13 UR - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2019/03/12/JNEUROSCI.2968-18.2019.abstract N2 - Eye movements provide a functional signature of how human vision is achieved. Many recent studies have consistently reported robust idiosyncratic visual sampling strategies during face recognition. Whether these inter-individual differences are mirrored by idiosyncratic neural responses remains unknown. To this aim, we first tracked eye movements of male and female observers during face recognition. Additionally, for every observer we obtained an objective index of neural face discrimination through EEG that was recorded while they fixated different facial information. We found that facial features fixated longer during face recognition elicited stronger neural face discrimination responses across all observers when foveated. This relationship occurred independently of inter-individual differences in preferential facial information sampling (e.g., eye vs. mouth lookers), and started as early as the first fixation. Our data show that eye movements play a functional role during face processing by providing the neural system with the information that is diagnostic to a specific observer. The effective processing of identity involves idiosyncratic, rather than universal face representations.SIGNIFICANT STATEMENTWhen engaging in face recognition, observers deploy idiosyncratic fixation patterns in order to sample facial information. Whether these individual differences concur with idiosyncratic faces-sensitive neural responses remains unclear. To address this issue, we recorded observers' fixation patterns, as well as their neural face discrimination responses elicited during fixation of ten different locations on the face, corresponding to different types of facial information. Our data reveal a clear interplay between individuals' face-sensitive neural responses and their idiosyncratic eye movement patterns during identity processing, which emerges as early as the first fixation. Collectively, our findings favor the existence of idiosyncratic, rather than universal face representations. ER -