Facial emotion recognition relies heavily on information conveyed by the eye region. However, different forms of eye occlusion may not affect emotional processing equivalently. While sunglasses mechanically obstruct visual information, closed eyes may additionally convey socially meaningful cues that alter emotional interpretation. The present EEG study investigated how natural versus artificial eye occlusion modulates the neural dynamics of facial emotion recognition.Twenty-two participants viewed facial expressions (fear, happiness, neutral) presented with open eyes, closed eyes, or sunglasses while EEG activity was recorded. Analyses focused on the N170, Early Posterior Negativity (EPN), and Late Positive Potential (LPP), indexing early perceptual, attentional, and later evaluative stages of emotional face processing.Results revealed a significant modulation of the N170 by eye condition, with larger amplitudes for open and closed eyes relative to sunglasses, suggesting enhanced structural encoding for biologically plausible eye configurations. The EPN showed a main effect of emotion, with fearful faces eliciting larger amplitudes overall, independently of eye visibility. No reliable omnibus effects emerged for the LPP. However, the hypothesis-driven contrast comparing fearful faces with closed eyes versus sunglasses was significant, with larger amplitudes for fear-sunglasses than fear-closed, suggesting that natural and artificial occlusion may differentially influence later evaluative processing of emotional expressions.Taken together, these findings suggest that eye occlusion is not processed uniformly by the visual system. Natural eye states may preserve socially meaningful information despite reduced visual access, whereas artificial occlusion may introduce perceptual ambiguity. These preliminary results provides evidence for distinct neural mechanisms underlying different forms of eye occlusion in emotion perception.