Conclusion
The N170 amplitudewas largestwhen fixationwas on the eyes compared
to any other facial locations and this effect was seen regardless of
face orientation and was lost when eyes were removed. These results
suggest a special sensitivity of this ERP component to eye features and
support the eye detector theory. Importantly, all the modulations of
the N170 can be explained by lateral inhibitions of the neurons coding
for the fixated feature in fovea by the neurons coding for features situated
in parafovea when faces are upright, which explains holistic processing,
and by the loss of these inhibitions with inversion, which explains the
perceptual narrowing phenomenon and the featural processing of
inverted faces. The LIFTED model assumes that the percept, whether
upright or inverted, is compared to an upright human face template. In
addition to further testing of this new model, outstanding questions
that need to be addressed by future studies are i)whatmakes a face template,
ii) how (and when) is the comparison of the percept to the face
template achieved and iii) what exactly is the nature of the eye detector/
anchoring mechanism.