In context: emotional intent and temporal immediacy of contextual descriptions modulate affective ERP components to facial expressions

Abstract In this study, we explored how contextual information about threat dynamics affected the electrophysiological correlates of face perception. Forty-six healthy native Swedish speakers read verbal descriptions signaling an immediate vs delayed intent to escalate or deescalate an interpersonal conflict. Each verbal description was followed by a face with an angry or neutral expression, for which participants rated valence and arousal. Affective ratings confirmed that the emotional intent expressed in the descriptions modulated emotional reactivity to the facial stimuli in the expected direction. The electrophysiological data showed that compared to neutral faces, angry faces resulted in enhanced early and late event-related potentials (VPP, P300 and LPP). Additionally, emotional intent and temporal immediacy modulated the VPP and P300 similarly across angry and neutral faces, suggesting that they influence early face perception independently of facial affect. By contrast, the LPP amplitude to faces revealed an interaction between facial expression and emotional intent. Deescalating descriptions eliminated the LPP differences between angry and neutral faces. Together, our results suggest that information about a person’s intentions modulates the processing of facial expressions.

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An ERP Study on Facial Expression of Emotion: Comparison of Linguistic and Visual Semantic Decoding

Perceptual and Motor Skills ◽

10.2466/pms.100.1.129-134 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 100 (1) ◽

pp. 129-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Michela Balconi

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Cognitive Processing ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Random Order ◽

Normal Subjects ◽

Emotional Content ◽

Facial Stimuli ◽

Facial Expression Of Emotion ◽

Expression Of Emotion ◽

Related Potentials

The present research compared the semantic information processing of linguistic stimuli with semantic elaboration of nonlinguistic facial stimuli. To explore brain potentials (ERPs, event-related potentials) related to decoding facial expressions and the effect of semantic valence of the stimulus, we analyzed data for 20 normal subjects ( M age = 23.6 yr., SD = 0.2). Faces with three basic emotional expressions (fear, happiness, and sadness from the 1976 Ekman and Friesen database), with three semantically anomalous expressions (with respect to their emotional content), and the neutral stimuli (face without an emotional content) were presented in a random order. Differences in peak amplitude of ERP were observed later for anomalous expressions compared with congruous expressions. In fact, the results demonstrated that the emotional anomalous faces elicited a higher negative peak at about 360 msec., distributed mainly over the posterior sites. The observed electrophysiological activity may represent specific cognitive processing underlying the comprehension of facial expressions in detection of semantic anomaly. The evidence is in favour of comparability of this negative deflection with the N400 ERP effect elicited by linguistic anomalies.

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Visual Gnosis and Face Perception

International Journal of Computational Models and Algorithms in Medicine ◽

10.4018/ijcmam.2012100102 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 3 (4) ◽

pp. 11-20

Author(s):

Shozo Tobimatsu

Keyword(s):

Spatial Frequency ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Face Perception ◽

Time Windows ◽

High Spatial Frequency ◽

Early Time ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Temporal Region ◽

The Face ◽

Related Potentials

There are two major parallel pathways in humans: the parvocellular (P) and magnocellular (M) pathways. The former has excellent spatial resolution with color selectivity, while the latter shows excellent temporal resolution with high contrast sensitivity. Visual stimuli should be tailored to answer specific clinical and/or research questions. This chapter examines the neural mechanisms of face perception using event-related potentials (ERPs). Face stimuli of different spatial frequencies were used to investigate how low-spatial-frequency (LSF) and high-spatial-frequency (HSF) components of the face contribute to the identification and recognition of the face and facial expressions. The P100 component in the occipital area (Oz), the N170 in the posterior temporal region (T5/T6) and late components peaking at 270-390 ms (T5/T6) were analyzed. LSF enhanced P100, while N170 was augmented by HSF irrespective of facial expressions. This suggested that LSF is important for global processing of facial expressions, whereas HSF handles featural processing. There were significant amplitude differences between positive and negative LSF facial expressions in the early time windows of 270-310 ms. Subsequently, the amplitudes among negative HSF facial expressions differed significantly in the later time windows of 330–390 ms. Discrimination between positive and negative facial expressions precedes discrimination among different negative expressions in a sequential manner based on parallel visual channels. Interestingly, patients with schizophrenia showed decreased spatial frequency sensitivities for face processing. Taken together, the spatially filtered face images are useful for exploring face perception and recognition.

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Enhanced Neural Empathic Responses in Patients with Spino-Bulbar Muscular Atrophy: An Electrophysiological Study

Brain Sciences ◽

10.3390/brainsci11010016 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 16

Author(s):

Arianna Palmieri ◽

Federica Meconi ◽

Antonino Vallesi ◽

Mariagrazia Capizzi ◽

Emanuele Pick ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Muscular Atrophy ◽

Contextual Information ◽

Electrophysiological Study ◽

Inverse Correlation ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Early Response ◽

Late Response ◽

Neural Responses ◽

Related Potentials

Background: Spino-bulbar muscular atrophy is a rare genetic X-linked disease caused by testosterone insensitivity. An inverse correlation has been described between testosterone levels and empathic responses. The present study explored the profile of neural empathic responding in spino-bulbar muscular atrophy patients. Methods: Eighteen patients with spino-bulbar muscular atrophy and eighteen healthy male controls were enrolled in the study. Their event-related potentials were recorded during an “Empathy Task” designed to distinguish neural responses linked with experience-sharing (early response) and mentalizing (late response) components of empathy. The task involved the presentation of contextual information (painful vs. neutral sentences) and facial expressions (painful vs. neutral). An explicit dispositional empathy-related questionnaire was also administered to all participants, who were screened via neuropsychological battery tests that did not reveal potential cognitive deficits. Due to electrophysiological artefacts, data from 12 patients and 17 controls were finally included in the analyses. Results: Although patients and controls did not differ in terms of dispositional, explicit empathic self-ratings, notably conservative event-related potentials analyses (i.e., spatio-temporal permutation cluster analyses) showed a significantly greater experience-sharing neural response in patients compared to healthy controls in the Empathy-task when both contextual information and facial expressions were painful. Conclusion: The present study contributes to the characterization of the psychological profile of patients with spino-bulbar muscular atrophy, highlighting the peculiarities in enhanced neural responses underlying empathic reactions.

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Depressive rumination is correlated with brain responses during self-related processing

10.1101/2021.03.18.21253930 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Tzu-Yu Hsu ◽

Tzu-Ling Liu ◽

Paul Z. Cheng ◽

Hsin-Chien Lee ◽

Timothy J. Lane ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Depressive Symptoms ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Unipolar Depression ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Late Event ◽

Oscillatory Power ◽

Related Aspect ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Central Symptom

AbstractBackgroundRumination, a tendency to focus on negative self-related thoughts, is a central symptom of depression. Studying the self-related aspect of such symptoms is challenging due to the need to distinguish self effects per se from the emotional content of task stimuli. This study employs an emotionally neutral self-related paradigm to investigate possible altered self processing in depression and its link to rumination.MethodsPeople with unipolar depression (MDD; n = 25) and controls (n = 25) underwent task-based EEG recording. Late event-related potentials were studied along with low frequency oscillatory power. EEG metrics were compared between groups and correlated with depressive symptoms and reported rumination.ResultsThe MDD group displayed a difference in late potentials across fronto-central electrodes between self-related and non-self-related conditions. No such difference was seen in controls. The magnitude of this difference was positively related with depressive symptoms and reported rumination. MDD also had elevated theta oscillation power at central electrodes in self-related conditions, which was not seen in controls.ConclusionsRumination appears linked to altered self-related processing in depression, independently of stimuli-related emotional confounds. This connection between self-related processing and depression may point to self-disorder being a core component of the condition.

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The Relationship Between Childhood Emotional Abuse and Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions in Healthy Young Men: Event-Related Potential and Behavioral Evidence

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.686529 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Yutong Liu ◽

Huini Peng ◽

Jianhui Wu ◽

Hongxia Duan

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Childhood Maltreatment ◽

Emotional Abuse ◽

Young Men ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Emotional Facial Expressions ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Childhood Emotional Abuse ◽

The Relationship

Background: Individuals exposed to childhood maltreatment present with a deficiency in emotional processing in later life. Most studies have focused mainly on childhood physical or sexual abuse; however, childhood emotional abuse, a core issue underlying different forms of childhood maltreatment, has received relatively little attention. The current study explored whether childhood emotional abuse is related to the impaired processing of emotional facial expressions in healthy young men.Methods: The emotional facial processing was investigated in a classical gender discrimination task while the event-related potentials (ERPs) data were collected. Childhood emotional abuse was assessed by a Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) among 60 healthy young men. The relationship between the score of emotional abuse and the behavioral and the ERP index of emotional facial expression (angry, disgust, and happy) were explored.Results: Participants with a higher score of childhood emotional abuse responded faster on the behavioral level and had a smaller P2 amplitude on the neural level when processing disgust faces compared to neutral faces.Discussion: Individuals with a higher level of childhood emotional abuse may quickly identify negative faces with less cognitive resources consumed, suggesting altered processing of emotional facial expressions in young men with a higher level of childhood emotional abuse.

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Neuropsychology of facial expressions. The role of consciousness in processing emotional faces

Neuropsychological Trends ◽

10.7358/neur-2012-011-balc ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Michela Balconi

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Emotional Information ◽

Unconscious Processing ◽

Emotional Faces ◽

Facial Expression Of Emotion ◽

Expression Of Emotion ◽

Brain Correlates ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Emotional Face

Neuropsychological studies have underlined the significant presence of distinct brain correlates deputed to analyze facial expression of emotion. It was observed that some cerebral circuits were considered as specific for emotional face comprehension as a function of conscious vs. unconscious processing of emotional information. Moreover, the emotional content of faces (i.e. positive vs. negative; more or less arousing) may have an effect in activating specific cortical networks. Between the others, recent studies have explained the contribution of hemispheres in comprehending face, as a function of type of emotions (mainly related to the distinction positive vs. negative) and of specific tasks (comprehending vs. producing facial expressions). Specifically, ERPs (event-related potentials) analysis overview is proposed in order to comprehend how face may be processed by an observer and how he can make face a meaningful construct even in absence of awareness. Finally, brain oscillations is considered in order to explain the synchronization of neural populations in response to emotional faces when a conscious vs. unconscious processing is activated.

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