ArticleeNeuro
A Naturalistic Dynamic Monkey Head Avatar Elicits Species-Typical Reactions and Overcomes the Uncanny Valley.
Article in eNeuro. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Behavioral characterization of dynamic facial expression perception in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) using naturalistic and synthetic stimuli.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Realistic monkey body animation reveals an uncanny valley in macaque body perception.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Monkeys integrate facial expressions and direct gaze to modulate gaze-following behavior.Current research in neurobiology · 2026Article
- Rhesus monkeys use both eye and head gaze to reallocate covert spatial attention facilitating visual perception.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- The use of gaze to study cognition: limitations, solutions, and applications to animal welfare.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Monkey visual attention does not fall into the uncanny valley.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Levels of naturalism in social neuroscience research.iScience · 2021Review
- Article
- Creepy cats and strange high houses: Support for configural processing in testing predictions of nine uncanny valley theories.Journal of vision · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research on social perception in monkeys may benefit from standardized, controllable, and ethologically valid renditions of conspecifics offered by monkey avatars. However, previous work has cautioned that monkeys, like humans, show an adverse reaction toward realistic synthetic stimuli, known as the "uncanny valley" effect. We developed an improved naturalistic rhesus monkey face avatar capable of producing facial expressions (fear grin, lip smack and threat), animated by motion capture data of real monkeys. For validation, we additionally created decreasingly naturalistic avatar variants. Eight rhesus macaques were tested on the various videos and avoided looking at less naturalistic avatar variants, but not at the most naturalistic or the most unnaturalistic avatar, indicating an uncanny valley effect for the less naturalistic avatar versions. The avoidance was deepened by motion and accompanied by physiological arousal. Only the most naturalistic avatar evoked facial expressions comparable to those toward the real monkey videos. Hence, our findings demonstrate that the uncanny valley reaction in monkeys can be overcome by a highly naturalistic avatar.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.