Effects of task demands on the early neural processing of fearful and happy facial expressions

Previous studies have shown that sharing an experience, without communicating, affects people’s subjective perception of the experience, often by intensifying it. However, the effect of shared experience on the underlying neural processing of information is not well understood. In this study, we aimed to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying shared attention by implementing a dual- EEG study where participants were required to attend to and judge the intensity of neutral, angry and happy faces, simultaneously or independently. In order to study whether the presence of another individual modulates an individual's perception and processing of facial expressions, we implemented three experimental conditions: 1) participants performed the task alone, in the absence of a social context (unshared condition), 2) participants performed the task simultaneously next to each other in pairs, without receiving feedback about the other participant's responses (shared no feedback) and 3) participants performed the task simultaneously while receiving the feedback (shared with feedback). We focused on two face-sensitive ERP components: the N170 and the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN). We found that the amplitude of the N170 was greater in the shared with feedback condition compared to the other conditions, reflecting a top-down effect of shared attention on the structural encoding of faces, irrespective of valence. In addition, the EPN was significantly greater in both shared context conditions compared to the unshared condition, reflecting an enhanced attention allocation in the processing of emotional content of faces, modulated by the social context. Behaviourally, we found a modulation on the perceived intensity of the neutral faces only when participants received the feedback of the other person’s ratings, by amplifying the perceived neutrality of faces. Taken together, these results suggest that shared attention amplifies the neural processing of faces, regardless of the valence of facial expressions.

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Neural processing of dynamic happy and fearful facial expressions in adolescents

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/s1053-8119(09)72157-3 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 47 ◽

pp. S192

Author(s):

J Rahko ◽

J-J Paakki ◽

H Ebeling ◽

T Hurtig ◽

E Jansson-Verkasalo ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Neural Processing

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Effects of acute tryptophan depletion on neural processing of facial expressions of emotion in humans

Psychopharmacology ◽

10.1007/s00213-010-1850-7 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 210 (4) ◽

pp. 499-510 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Eileen Daly ◽

Quinton Deeley ◽

Brian Hallahan ◽

Michael Craig ◽

Michael Brammer ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Acute Tryptophan Depletion ◽

Tryptophan Depletion ◽

Neural Processing ◽

Facial Expressions Of Emotion

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The Decoupled Mind: Mind-wandering Disrupts Cortical Phase-locking to Perceptual Events

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00656 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 26 (11) ◽

pp. 2596-2607 ◽

Cited By ~ 56

Author(s):

Benjamin Baird ◽

Jonathan Smallwood ◽

Antoine Lutz ◽

Jonathan W. Schooler

Keyword(s):

Sensory Input ◽

Phase Locking ◽

Mind Wandering ◽

Task Demands ◽

Perceptual Processing ◽

Neural Processing ◽

Stream Of Consciousness ◽

Time Frequency ◽

The Mind ◽

The Brain

The mind flows in a “stream of consciousness,” which often neglects immediate sensory input in favor of focusing on intrinsic, self-generated thoughts or images. Although considerable research has documented the disruptive influences of task-unrelated thought for perceptual processing and task performance, the brain dynamics associated with these phenomena are not well understood. Here we investigate the possibility, suggested by several convergent lines of research, that task-unrelated thought is associated with a reduction in the trial-to-trial phase consistency of the oscillatory neural signal in response to perceptual input. Using an experience sampling paradigm coupled with continuous high-density electroencephalography, we observed that task-unrelated thought was associated with a reduction of the P1 ERP, replicating prior observations that mind-wandering is accompanied by a reduction of the brain-evoked response to sensory input. Time–frequency analysis of the oscillatory neural response revealed a decrease in theta-band cortical phase-locking, which peaked over parietal scalp regions. Furthermore, we observed that task-unrelated thought impacted the oscillatory mode of the brain during the initiation of a task-relevant action, such that more cortical processing was required to meet task demands. Together, these findings document that the attenuation of perceptual processing that occurs during task-unrelated thought is associated with a reduction in the temporal fidelity with which the brain responds to a stimulus and suggest that increased neural processing may be required to recouple attention to a task. More generally, these data provide novel confirmatory evidence for the mechanisms through which attentional states facilitate the neural processing of sensory input.

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Aberrant modulation of brain activity underlies impaired working memory following traumatic brain injury

10.1101/2021.03.23.436708 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Abbie S. Taing ◽

Matthew E. Mundy ◽

Jennie L. Ponsford ◽

Gershon Spitz

Keyword(s):

Traumatic Brain Injury ◽

Working Memory ◽

Brain Injury ◽

Cognitive Load ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Memory Task ◽

Task Demands ◽

Neural Activation ◽

Neural Processing ◽

Specific Working

AbstractImpaired working memory capacity is a common and disabling consequence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) that is caused by aberrant neural processing. However, due to high heterogeneity in results across studies, it is challenging to conclude whether impaired working memory in this population is driven by neural hypo- or hyper-activation, and the extent to which deficits are perpetuated by specific working memory subprocesses. Using a combined functional magnetic resonance imaging and working memory paradigm, we tested the hypothesis that the pattern of neural activation subserving working memory following TBI would interact with both task demands and specific working memory subcomponents: encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. Behaviourally, we found that working memory deficits were confined to the high cognitive load trials. Our results confirmed our key prediction. Overall, TBI participants showed reduced brain activity while performing the working memory task. However, interrogation of the subcomponents of working memory revealed a more nuanced pattern of activation. When we simply averaged across all task trials, regardless of cognitive load or subcomponent, TBI participants showed reduced neural activation. When examined more closely, patterns of brain activity following TBI were found to interact with both task demands and working memory subcomponent. Participants with TBI demonstrated an inability to appropriately modulate brain activity between low and high demand conditions necessary during encoding and maintenance stages. Therefore, we demonstrate that conclusions about aberrant neural processing are dependent upon the level of analysis and the extent to which general cognitive domains can be parcellated into its constituent parts.

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Fixation to features and neural processing of facial expressions in a gender discrimination task

Brain and Cognition ◽

10.1016/j.bandc.2015.05.007 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 99 ◽

pp. 97-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Karly N. Neath ◽

Roxane J. Itier

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Gender Discrimination ◽

Discrimination Task ◽

Neural Processing

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Control of attention in bipolar disorder: Effects of perceptual load in processing task-irrelevant facial expressions

European Psychiatry ◽

10.1016/j.eurpsy.2016.01.1172 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 33 (S1) ◽

pp. S335-S335

Author(s):

J. Grave ◽

S. Soares ◽

N. Madeira ◽

P. Rodrigues ◽

T. Santos ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

Response Time ◽

Target Letter ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Perceptual Load ◽

Irrelevant Stimulus ◽

High Load ◽

Task Demands ◽

Bipolar Patients ◽

Task Irrelevant

Bipolar disorder (BD), along with schizophrenia, is one of the most severe psychiatric conditions and is correlated with attentional deficits and emotion dysregulation. Bipolar patients appear to be highly sensitive to the presence of emotional distractors. Yet, no study has investigated whether perceptual load modulates the interference of emotionally distracting information. Our main goal was to test whether bipolar patients are more sensitive to task-irrelevant emotional stimulus, even when the task demands a high amount of attentional resources.Fourteen participants with BD I or BD II and 14 controls, age- and gender-matched, performed a target-letter discrimination task with emotional task-irrelevant stimulus (angry, happy and neutral facial expressions). Target-letters were presented among five distractor-letters, which could be the same (low perceptual load) or different (high perceptual load). Participants should discriminate the target-letter and ignore the facial expression. Response time and accuracy rate were analyzed.Resultsshowed a greater interference of facial stimuli at high load than low load, confirming the effectiveness of perceptual load manipulation. More importantly, patients tarried significantly longer at high load. This is consistent with deficits in control of attention, showing that bipolar patients are more prone to distraction by task-irrelevant stimulus only when the task is more demanding. Moreover, for bipolar patients neutral and angry faces resulted in a higher interference with the task (longer response time), compared to controls, suggesting an attentional bias for neutral and threating social cues. Nevertheless, a more detailed investigation regarding the attentional impairments in social context in BD is needed.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

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