Rapid cortical responses to the unpleasantness of natural surfaces and their relationship to image statistics

Humans not only perceive material properties of natural surfaces but also evaluate their affective qualities, such as pleasantness or unpleasantness. Recent psychophysical studies suggest that such emotional impressions can arise directly from low-level image statistics, independent of object recogn...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Vision research (Oxford) Vol. 237; p. 108707
Main Authors: Ogawa, Narumi, Motoyoshi, Isamu
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2025
Subjects:
Adult
Electroencephalography
Emotion
Emotions - physiology
Evoked Potentials, Visual - physiology
Female
Humans
Image statistics
Male
Natural surface
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Photic Stimulation - methods
Texture
Visual Cortex - physiology
Visual evoked potentials
Visual Perception - physiology
Young Adult
Visual evoked potentials
Natural surface
Emotion
Texture
Image statistics
ISSN:0042-6989, 1878-5646, 1878-5646
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Humans not only perceive material properties of natural surfaces but also evaluate their affective qualities, such as pleasantness or unpleasantness. Recent psychophysical studies suggest that such emotional impressions can arise directly from low-level image statistics, independent of object recognition. To elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying these immediate affective responses, we recorded visual evoked potentials (VEPs) while participants viewed 150 images of natural surfaces varying in affective valence. We identified occipital VEP components emerging around 100–150 ms after stimulus onset that were significantly correlated with subjective unpleasantness ratings. Moreover, these unpleasantness-related VEPs were accurately predicted by a linear combination of VEP components associated with a small set of diagnostic image statistics. Our findings indicate that early visual cortical activity encodes image features that give rise to unpleasant affective responses, supporting the notion that rapid, low-level visual processing can directly contribute to the emotional evaluation of visual textures and materials.
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ISSN:0042-6989
1878-5646
1878-5646
DOI:10.1016/j.visres.2025.108707