Studies have suggested that the holistic advantage in face perception is not always reported for the own face. With two eye-tracking experiments, we explored the role of holistic and featural processing in the processing and the recognition of self, personally familiar, and unfamiliar faces. Observers were asked to freely explore (Exp.1) and recognize (Exp.2) their own, a friend's, and an unfamiliar face. In Exp.1, self-face was fixated more and longer and there was a preference for the mouth region when seeing the own face and for the nose region when seeing a friend and unfamiliar faces. In Exp.2, the viewing strategies did not differ across all faces, with eye fixations mostly directed to the nose region. These results suggest that task demands might modulate the way that the own face is perceived and highlights the importance of considering the role of the distinct visual experience people have for the own face in the processing and recognition of the self-face.
Music strongly shapes emotional perception, yet its influence on social threat evaluation remains underexplored. This study examined whether scary music biases threat perception of emotional faces using subjective ratings and pupillometry. In a within-subjects design, a predominantly female sample of participants viewed angry, neutral, and happy faces following either scary music or white noise. Behavioural ratings showed that faces were perceived as more threatening after scary music relative to white noise, consistent with affective priming accounts. Notably, the effect extended beyond angry and neutral faces to happy faces, suggesting that the pairing with fear-inducing music distorted their positive meaning, perhaps conveying ill intent instead. Pupillometry results revealed no overall effect of scary music on pupil size; however, an interaction showed increased pupil dilation to neutral faces under scary music, consistent with the heightened susceptibility of ambiguous stimuli to priming. Angry and happy faces may have elicited sufficient arousal on their own, limiting additional music-related effects. These findings demonstrate that scary music biases threat perception both behaviourally and physiologically, though not uniformly across emotions. By showing that music can alter the evaluation of socially meaningful stimuli (i.e., facial expressions), this study advances understanding of cross-modal affective priming and has implications for contexts where music may unconsciously shape social judgements.
Background: Recent evidence suggests that some flavonoid compounds obtained from crude methanol extract of mistletoe leaves ( Dendrophthoe pentandra L. Miq), also known as Benalu Duku (BD), have antimicrobial effects. Thus, the plant has the potential to eliminate viruses that may cause outbreaks in chicken farms. This study aimed to prove the in vitro ability of flavonoid compounds, namely quercetin-like compounds (QLCs), to eliminate field viruses, specifically the Newcastle disease virus (NDV). Methods: This research was performed in two stages. An in vitro test was used with a post-test of the control groups designed at a significance of 0.05. BD leaves (5 kg) were extracted using a maceration method with methanol and then separated into hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, and methanol fractions. The final extracted products were separated using semi-preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to obtain QLCs. The QLCs were identified and compared with quercetin using HPLC, proton and carbon nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry, Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry, and ultra-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The activity of QLCs was tested in vitro against the NDV at a virulency titer of 10 -5 Tissue Culture Infectious Dose 50% (TCID50) and in chicken kidney cell culture. Results: Solutions of 0.05% (w/v) QLCs were discovered to have antiviral activity against NDVs, with an average cytopathogenic effect antigenicity at a 10 -5 dilution (p<0.05). Conclusions: QLCs from flavonoids from the leaves of BD have antiviral bioactivity against NDVs and may have the potential to be developed as medicinal compounds for the treatment of other human or animal viral infections.