Research

Face and threat

In previous research, we have studied top-down processing in face familiarity (Righart, Burra, & Vuilleumier, 2012), using primarily the eye region.

Thus, we study attentional capture by threatening stimuli, using schematic or real images of angry, happy, and neutral faces (Burra, Barras, Coll, & Kerzel, 2016; Burra, Coll, Barras and Kerzel, 2017).

Current research focuses on the pareidolia of facial expression perception and the importance of the eye region in detecting facial expressions.

In addition, we study attentional processing of threat using human vocalizations, referred to as prosody (Burra, Kerzel, Munoz, Grandjean, & Ceravolo, 2018).

Gaze and Social cognition

I am interested in another very salient stimulus, eye contact. In collaboration with the Geneva Hospital and Prof. Alan Pegna, we demonstrated that gaze contact increases activation of the right amygdala despite a rare case of cortical blindness (Burra et al., 2013), i.e. without visual awareness.

Based on this finding, we investigated:

1) The impact of eye contact in terms of early distractor stimulus in visual search and how your eyes detect this stimulus (using EEG, MEG and eye-tracking, in collaboration with Dr. Nathalie George). We are also interested in the impact of anxiety on gaze perception.

2) The impact of gaze orientation as a cue in attentional deployment with neurological patients (Burra et al., 2014).

3) The impact of eye contact on attention (Burra et al., 2021) and the role of context on gaze perception