Fig. 3: Neural representations of illusory faces and their behavioral relevance.

Time-varying correlations between neural responses (N = 20), behavior and visual category models. A Responses on three different behavioral tasks reflected different dynamics in the neural signal. B Category models that considered illusory faces either equivalent to human faces, equivalent to objects, or a distinct third category correlated differentially with neural representations over time. Specifically, the face model had the highest correlation for the first stage of processing, but was rapidly overtaken by the object model. These results indicate a change in illusory face processing over time, where illusory faces initially and briefly resemble human faces but subsequently resemble objects. Noise ceiling reflects the lower bound of the expected RDM correlation based on the noise in the data. Error bars (shaded areas) reflect one standard error of the mean.