scholarly journals Faces emotional expressions: from perceptive to motor areas in aged and young subjects.

Author(s):  
Nicola Loi ◽  
Francesca Ginatempo ◽  
Andrea Manca ◽  
Francesco Melis ◽  
Franca Deriu

The role of age in perception and production of facial expressions is still unclear. Therefore, this work compared, in aged and young subjects, the effects of passive viewing of faces expressing different emotions on perceptive brain regions, such as occipital and temporal cortical areas and on the primary motor cortex (M1) innervating face muscles. Seventeen young (24.41±0.71 years) and seventeen aged (63.82±0.99 years) subjects underwent recording of event-related potentials (ERP), of motor potentials evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation of face M1 in the depressor anguli oris muscle and reaction time assessment. In both groups, the P100 and N170 waves, as well as short-latency intracortical inhibition (SICI) and intracortical facilitation (ICF) were probed in face M1 after 300 ms from the presentation of images reporting faces expressing happy, sad and neutral emotions. ERP data evidenced a major involvement of the right hemisphere in perceptual processing of faces, regardless of age. Compared with young subjects, the aged group showed a delayed N170 wave and a smaller P100 wave following the view of sad but not happy or neutral expressions, along with less accuracy and longer reaction times for recognition of the emotion expressed by faces. Aged subjects presented less SICI than young subjects, but facial expressions of happiness increased the excitability of face M1 with no differences between groups. In conclusion, data suggest that encoding of sad face expressions is impaired in the aged compared to the young group, while perception of happiness and its excitatory effects on face M1 remains preserved.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1329
Author(s):  
Yong Liu ◽  
Jia Zhao ◽  
Xinqi Zhou ◽  
Xiaolin Liu ◽  
Hong Chen ◽  
...  

Mind-wandering (MW) is a common phenomenon, defined as task-unrelated thoughts. This study is based on event-related potentials (ERPs), using modified sustained attention to response task (modified SART, mSART) to discuss the neural patterns of different types of MW. In the current study, we defined the MW realized by participants as self-caught MW, and the MW measurement acquired by probes as probe-caught MW. The behavioral results showed that the reaction times (RTs) during self-caught MW were greater than those during non-self-caught MW. The ERP results showed that during self-caught MW, the mean amplitudes of N1 decreased significantly, indicating that the participants’ attention had deviated from the current task. The increase in the mean amplitudes of P2 during self-caught MW indicated lower vigilance. We also found that the mean amplitudes of N300 reduced during self-caught MW, which indicated that cognitive control or monitoring might be affected by self-caught MW. The average amplitudes of P300 were significantly lower during probe-caught MW than during on-task, indicating the impact on high-level cognitive processing. In addition, the amplitudes of N1, P2, and N300 in anterior regions were greater than those in posterior regions. P300 amplitudes during probe-caught MW in the right hemisphere were greater than those of the left hemisphere. In summary, our research results demonstrated that alertness and cognitive processing decreased during both self-caught MW and probe-caught MW. ERPs were statistically different under the conditions of self-caught MW and probe-caught MW. The current study provided new insights into the relationship between MW and neural markers. It was the first study exploring the ERP correlates between self-caught MW and probe-caught MW based on mSART.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Lisa K. Chinn ◽  
Irina Ovchinnikova ◽  
Anastasia A. Sukmanova ◽  
Aleksandra O. Davydova ◽  
Elena L. Grigorenko

Abstract Millions of children worldwide are raised in institutionalized settings. Unfortunately, institutionalized rearing is often characterized by psychosocial deprivation, leading to difficulties in numerous social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills. One such skill is the ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. Children with a history of institutional rearing tend to be worse at recognizing emotions in facial expressions than their peers, and this deficit likely affects social interactions. However, emotional information is also conveyed vocally, and neither prosodic information processing nor the cross-modal integration of facial and prosodic emotional expressions have been investigated in these children to date. We recorded electroencephalograms (EEG) while 47 children under institutionalized care (IC) (n = 24) or biological family care (BFC) (n = 23) viewed angry, happy, or neutral facial expressions while listening to pseudowords with angry, happy, or neutral prosody. The results indicate that 20- to 40-month-olds living in IC have event-related potentials (ERPs) over midfrontal brain regions that are less sensitive to incongruent facial and prosodic emotions relative to children under BFC, and that their brain responses to prosody are less lateralized. Children under IC also showed midfrontal ERP differences in processing of angry prosody, indicating that institutionalized rearing may specifically affect the processing of anger.


2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan R. Schweinberger ◽  
Thomas Klos ◽  
Werner Sommer

Abstract: We recorded reaction times (RTs) and event-related potentials (ERPs) in patients with unilateral lesions during a memory search task. Participants memorized faces or abstract words, which were then recognized among new ones. The RT deficit found in patients with left brain damage (LBD) for words increased with memory set size, suggesting that their problem relates to memory search. In contrast, the RT deficit found in patients with RBD for faces was apparently related to perceptual encoding, a conclusion also supported by their reduced P100 ERP component. A late slow wave (720-1720 ms) was enhanced in patients, particularly to words in patients with LBD, and to faces in patients with RBD. Thus, the slow wave was largest in the conditions with most pronounced performance deficits, suggesting that it reflects deficit-related resource recruitment.


2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (01) ◽  
pp. 001-013 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Jerger ◽  
Rebecca Estes

We studied auditory evoked responses to the apparent movement of a burst of noise in the horizontal plane. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured in three groups of participants: children in the age range from 9 to 12 years, young adults in the age range from 18 to 34 years, and seniors in the age range from 65 to 80 years. The topographic distribution of grand-averaged ERP activity was substantially greater over the right hemisphere in children and seniors but slightly greater over the left hemisphere in young adults. This finding may be related to age-related differences in the extent to which judgments of sound movement are based on displacement versus velocity information.


2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dermot Barnes-Holmes ◽  
Donal Regan ◽  
Yvonne Barnes-Holmes ◽  
Sean Commins ◽  
Derek Walsh ◽  
...  

1999 ◽  
Vol 127 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Spantekow ◽  
Paul Krappmann ◽  
Stefan Everling ◽  
Hans Flohr

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Chamine ◽  
Barry S. Oken

Objective. Stress-reducing therapies help maintain cognitive performance during stress. Aromatherapy is popular for stress reduction, but its effectiveness and mechanism are unclear. This study examined stress-reducing effects of aromatherapy on cognitive function using the go/no-go (GNG) task performance and event related potentials (ERP) components sensitive to stress. The study also assessed the importance of expectancy in aromatherapy actions.Methods. 81 adults were randomized to 3 aroma groups (active experimental, detectable, and undetectable placebo) and 2 prime subgroups (prime suggesting stress-reducing aroma effects or no-prime). GNG performance, ERPs, subjective expected aroma effects, and stress ratings were assessed at baseline and poststress.Results. No specific aroma effects on stress or cognition were observed. However, regardless of experienced aroma, people receiving a prime displayed faster poststress median reaction times than those receiving no prime. A significant interaction for N200 amplitude indicated divergent ERP patterns between baseline and poststress for go and no-go stimuli depending on the prime subgroup. Furthermore, trends for beneficial prime effects were shown on poststress no-go N200/P300 latencies and N200 amplitude.Conclusion. While there were no aroma-specific effects on stress or cognition, these results highlight the role of expectancy for poststress response inhibition and attention.


2005 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michela Balconi

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.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
T. Sumiyoshi ◽  
Y. Higuchi ◽  
T. Itoh ◽  
M. Matsui ◽  
H. Arai ◽  
...  

The purpose of this study was to determine if perospirone, a second generation antipsychotic drug and partial agonist at serotonin-5-HT1A receptors, enhances electrophysiological activity, such as event-related potentials (ERPs), in frontal brain regions, as well as cognitive function in subjects with schizophrenia. P300 current source images were obtained by means of standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) before and after treatment with perospirone for 6 months. Perospirone significantly increased P300 current source density in the left superior frontal gyrus, and improved positive symptoms and performance on the script tasks, a measure of verbal social cognition. Perospirone also tended to enhance verbal learning memory in patients with schizophrenia. There was a significant correlation between the changes in P300 amplitudes on the left frontal lead and those in social cognition. These results suggest the changes in three-dimensional distribution of cortical activity, as demonstrated by sLORETA, may mediate some of the actions of antipsychotic drugs. the distinct cognition-enhancing profile of perospirone may be related to its actions on 5-HT1A receptors.


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