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Gaze direction and especially direct gaze is a powerful nonverbal cue that plays an important role in social interactions. Here we studied the neural mechanisms underlying the privileged access of direct gaze to visual awareness. We performed functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy human volunteers who were exposed to faces with direct or averted gaze under continuous flash suppression, thereby manipulating their awareness of the faces. A gaze processing network comprising fusiform face area (FFA), superior temporal sulcus, amygdala, and intraparietal sulcus showed overall reduced neural responses when participants reported to be unaware of the faces. Interestingly, direct gaze elicited greater responses than averted gaze when participants were aware of the faces, but smaller responses when they were unaware. Additional between-subject correlation and single-trial analyses indicated that this pattern of results was due to a modulation of the relationship between neural responses and awareness by gaze direction: with increasing neural activation in the FFA, direct-gaze faces entered awareness more readily than averted-gaze faces. These findings suggest that for direct gaze, lower levels of neural activity are sufficient to give rise to awareness than for averted gaze, thus providing a neural basis for privileged access of direct gaze to awareness. Significance statement: Another person's eye gaze directed at oneself is a powerful social signal acting as a catalyst for further communication. Here, we studied the neural mechanisms underlying the prioritized access of direct gaze to visual awareness in healthy human volunteers and show that with increasing neural activation, direct-gaze faces enter awareness more readily than averted-gaze faces. This suggests that for a socially highly relevant cue like direct gaze, lower levels of neural activity are sufficient to give rise to awareness compared with averted gaze, possibly because the human brain is attuned to the efficient neural processing of direct gaze due to the biological importance of eye contact for social interactions.

Gaze Direction Modulates the Relation between Neural Responses to Faces and Visual Awareness