Event-related potentials index neural response to eye contact

Abstract

Sensitivity to eye-contact is a foundation upon which social cognition is built. However, there are no known neural markers characterizing response to reciprocal gaze. Using co-registered EEG and eye-tracking, we measured brain activity while participants viewed faces that responded to their looking patterns. Contingent upon participant gaze, onscreen faces opened their eyes or mouths; in this way we measured brain response to reciprocal eye-contact. We identified two ERP components that were largest in response to reciprocal eye-contact: the N170 and the P300. The magnitude of the components’ differences between reciprocal eye-contact and mouth movement predicted self-reported social function. Individuals with greater brain response to reciprocal eye-contact reported more normative scores on measures of autistic traits. These results present the first neural markers of eye-contact, revealing that reciprocal eye-contact is identified in less than 500 ms. Furthermore, individual differences in brain response to eye-contact predict meaningful variability in self-reports of social performance.