A study is dedicated to an actual problem in the field of engineering psychology - a study of perception of face images during various conditions of incentive recurrence probability. The results showed that during low incentive recurrence probability (appearance of different face images) in the second part of the study activity increases, and on the contrary, when the incentive recurrence probability is high (appearance of the same face image) the activity decreases. During the subtraction «phase 1 - phase 2» a significant difference in activation of the prefrontal, premotor, parietal and temporal areas of the brain can be seen at the beginning and at the end of the study, during the subtraction «phase 2 - phase 1» - in the areas of the «default mode network» of the brain. The obtained results will make a significant contribution to the development of the automatic adaptive systems that can assess the functional state of the operator.