scholarly journals A Quantitative Examination of Extreme Facial Pain Expression in Neonates: The Primal Face of Pain across Time

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Schiavenato ◽  
Carl L. von Baeyer

Many pain assessment tools for preschool and school-aged children are based on facial expressions of pain. Despite broad use, their metrics are not rooted in the anatomic display of the facial pain expression. We aim to describe quantitatively the patterns of initiation and maintenance of the infant pain expression across an expressive cycle. We evaluated the trajectory of the pain expression of three newborns with the most intense facial display among 63 infants receiving a painful stimulus. A modified “point-pair” system was used to measure movement in key areas across the face by analyzing still pictures from video recording the procedure. Point-pairs were combined into “upper face” and “lower face” variables; duration and intensity of expression were standardized. Intensity and duration of expression varied among infants. Upper and lower face movement rose and overlapped in intensity about 30% into the expression. The expression reached plateau without major change for the duration of the expressive cycle. We conclude that there appears to be a shared pattern in the dynamic trajectory of the pain display among infants expressing extreme intensity. We speculate that these patterns are important in the communication of pain, and their incorporation in facial pain scales may improve current metrics.

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 1199
Author(s):  
Seho Park ◽  
Kunyoung Lee ◽  
Jae-A Lim ◽  
Hyunwoong Ko ◽  
Taehoon Kim ◽  
...  

Research on emotion recognition from facial expressions has found evidence of different muscle movements between genuine and posed smiles. To further confirm discrete movement intensities of each facial segment, we explored differences in facial expressions between spontaneous and posed smiles with three-dimensional facial landmarks. Advanced machine analysis was adopted to measure changes in the dynamics of 68 segmented facial regions. A total of 57 normal adults (19 men, 38 women) who displayed adequate posed and spontaneous facial expressions for happiness were included in the analyses. The results indicate that spontaneous smiles have higher intensities for upper face than lower face. On the other hand, posed smiles showed higher intensities in the lower part of the face. Furthermore, the 3D facial landmark technique revealed that the left eyebrow displayed stronger intensity during spontaneous smiles than the right eyebrow. These findings suggest a potential application of landmark based emotion recognition that spontaneous smiles can be distinguished from posed smiles via measuring relative intensities between the upper and lower face with a focus on left-sided asymmetry in the upper region.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1379-1398
Author(s):  
Norman Waterhouse ◽  
Naresh Noshi ◽  
Niall Kirkpatrick ◽  
Lisa Brendling

Facial ageing occurs as a consequence of multifactorial changes in both the external skin and underlying tissues. The ageing process may vary dramatically between individual patients and is thus influenced by genetic factors. When assessing the ageing face it is important to consider the skeletal architecture, the soft tissue layers including the anterior fat pads, the osseocutaneous ligament anchors, and finally the overlying skin. Assessment of the external skin incorporates factors such as dermal thinning, solar damage, lifestyle effects such as smoking, and Fitzpatrick skin type. Surgical correction of facial ageing attempts to reverse both gravitational change of soft tissues and also to restore volume loss. There are a variety of methods used to divide the face into regions, but for the purpose of this chapter, the surgical management of facial ageing will be separated into three anatomical areas: (1) upper face, including the upper eyelids, eyebrows, and forehead; (2) midface, including the lower eyelid/anterior cheek continuum; and (3) lower and lateral cheek, neck, and perioral region


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-639
Author(s):  
Sara Siyavoshi ◽  
Sherman Wilcox

Abstract Signed languages employ finely articulated facial and head displays to express grammatical meanings such as mood and modality, complex propositions (conditionals, causal relations, complementation), information structure (topic, focus), assertions, content and yes/no questions, imperatives, and miratives. In this paper we examine two facial displays: an upper face display in which the eyebrows are pulled together called brow furrow, and a lower face display in which the corners of the mouth are turned down into a distinctive configuration that resembles a frown or upside-down U-shape. Our analysis employs Cognitive Grammar, specifically the control cycle and its manifestation in effective control and epistemic control. Our claim is that effective and epistemic control are associated with embodied actions. Prototypical physical effective control requires effortful activity and the forceful exertion of energy and is commonly correlated with upper face activity, often called the “face of effort.” The lower face display has been shown to be associated with epistemic indetermination, uncertainty, doubt, obviousness, and skepticism. We demonstrate that the control cycle unifies the diverse grammatical functions expressed by each facial display within a language, and that they express similar functions across a wide range of signed languages.


2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Wolf ◽  
Thomas Raedler ◽  
Kai Henke ◽  
Falk Kiefer ◽  
Reinhard Mass ◽  
...  

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this pilot study was to establish the validity of an improved facial electromyogram (EMG) method for the measurement of facial pain expression.BACKGROUND: Darwin defined pain in connection with fear as a simultaneous occurrence of eye staring, brow contraction and teeth chattering. Prkachin was the first to use the video-based Facial Action Coding System to measure facial expressions while using four different types of pain triggers, identifying a group of facial muscles around the eyes.METHOD: The activity of nine facial muscles in 10 healthy male subjects was analyzed. Pain was induced through a laser system with a randomized sequence of different intensities. Muscle activity was measured with a new, highly sensitive and selective facial EMG.RESULTS: The results indicate two groups of muscles as key for pain expression. These results are in concordance with Darwin's definition. As in Prkachin's findings, one muscle group is assembled around the orbicularis oculi muscle, initiating eye staring. The second group consists of the mentalis and depressor anguli oris muscles, which trigger mouth movements.CONCLUSIONS: The results demonstrate the validity of the facial EMG method for measuring facial pain expression. Further studies with psychometric measurements, a larger sample size and a female test group should be conducted.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong-Ho Lee ◽  
Sherryse L Corrow ◽  
Raika Pancaroglu ◽  
Jason J S Barton

The scanpaths of healthy subjects show biases towards the upper face, the eyes and the center of the face, which suggests that their fixations are guided by a feature hierarchy towards the regions most informative for face identification. However, subjects with developmental prosopagnosia have a lifelong impairment in face processing. Whether this is reflected in the loss of normal face-scanning strategies is not known. The goal of this study was to determine if subjects with developmental prosopagnosia showed anomalous scanning biases as they processed the identity of faces. We recorded the fixations of 10 subjects with developmental prosopagnosia as they performed a face memorization and recognition task, for comparison with 8 subjects with acquired prosopagnosia (four with anterior temporal lesions and four with occipitotemporal lesions) and 20 control subjects. The scanning of healthy subjects confirmed a bias to fixate the upper over the lower face, the eyes over the mouth, and the central over the peripheral face. Subjects with acquired prosopagnosia from occipitotemporal lesions had more dispersed fixations and a trend to fixate less informative facial regions. Subjects with developmental prosopagnosia did not differ from the controls. At a single-subject level, some developmental subjects performed abnormally, but none consistently across all metrics. Scanning distributions were not related to scores on perceptual or memory tests for faces. We conclude that despite lifelong difficulty with faces, subjects with developmental prosopagnosia still have an internal facial schema that guides their scanning behavior.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 117954762199457
Author(s):  
Daniele Emedoli ◽  
Maddalena Arosio ◽  
Andrea Tettamanti ◽  
Sandro Iannaccone

Background: Buccofacial Apraxia is defined as the inability to perform voluntary movements of the larynx, pharynx, mandible, tongue, lips and cheeks, while automatic or reflexive control of these structures is preserved. Buccofacial Apraxia frequently co-occurs with aphasia and apraxia of speech and it has been reported as almost exclusively resulting from a lesion of the left hemisphere. Recent studies have demonstrated the benefit of treating apraxia using motor training principles such as Augmented Feedback or Action Observation Therapy. In light of this, the study describes the treatment based on immersive Action Observation Therapy and Virtual Reality Augmented Feedback in a case of Buccofacial Apraxia. Participant and Methods: The participant is a right-handed 58-years-old male. He underwent a neurosurgery intervention of craniotomy and exeresis of infra axial expansive lesion in the frontoparietal convexity compatible with an atypical meningioma. Buccofacial Apraxia was diagnosed by a neurologist and evaluated by the Upper and Lower Face Apraxia Test. Buccofacial Apraxia was quantified also by a specific camera, with an appropriately developed software, able to detect the range of motion of automatic face movements and the range of the same movements on voluntary requests. In order to improve voluntary movements, the participant completed fifteen 1-hour rehabilitation sessions, composed of a 20-minutes immersive Action Observation Therapy followed by a 40-minutes Virtual Reality Augmented Feedback sessions, 5 days a week, for 3 consecutive weeks. Results: After treatment, participant achieved great improvements in quality and range of facial movements, performing most of the facial expressions (eg, kiss, smile, lateral angle of mouth displacement) without unsolicited movement. Furthermore, the Upper and Lower Face Apraxia Test showed an improvement of 118% for the Upper Face movements and of 200% for the Lower Face movements. Conclusion: Performing voluntary movement in a Virtual Reality environment with Augmented Feedbacks, in addition to Action Observation Therapy, improved performances of facial gestures and consolidate the activations by the central nervous system based on principles of experience-dependent neural plasticity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Treal ◽  
Philip L. Jackson ◽  
Jean Jeuvrey ◽  
Nicolas Vignais ◽  
Aurore Meugnot

AbstractVirtual reality platforms producing interactive and highly realistic characters are being used more and more as a research tool in social and affective neuroscience to better capture both the dynamics of emotion communication and the unintentional and automatic nature of emotional processes. While idle motion (i.e., non-communicative movements) is commonly used to create behavioural realism, its use to enhance the perception of emotion expressed by a virtual character is critically lacking. This study examined the influence of naturalistic (i.e., based on human motion capture) idle motion on two aspects (the perception of other’s pain and affective reaction) of an empathic response towards pain expressed by a virtual character. In two experiments, 32 and 34 healthy young adults were presented video clips of a virtual character displaying a facial expression of pain while its body was either static (still condition) or animated with natural postural oscillations (idle condition). The participants in Experiment 1 rated the facial pain expression of the virtual human as more intense, and those in Experiment 2 reported being more touched by its pain expression in the idle condition compared to the still condition, indicating a greater empathic response towards the virtual human’s pain in the presence of natural postural oscillations. These findings are discussed in relation to the models of empathy and biological motion processing. Future investigations will help determine to what extent such naturalistic idle motion could be a key ingredient in enhancing the anthropomorphism of a virtual human and making its emotion appear more genuine.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna J Karmann ◽  
Stefan Lautenbacher ◽  
Florian Bauer ◽  
Miriam Kunz

BACKGROUND: Facial responses to pain are believed to be an act of communication and, as such, are likely to be affected by the relationship between sender and receiver.OBJECTIVES: To investigate this effect by examining the impact that variations in communicative relations (from being alone to being with an intimate other) have on the elements of the facial language used to communicate pain (types of facial responses), and on the degree of facial expressiveness.METHODS: Facial responses of 126 healthy participants to phasic heat pain were assessed in three different social situations: alone, but aware of video recording; in the presence of an experimenter; and in the presence of an intimate other. Furthermore, pain catastrophizing and sex (of participant and experimenter) were considered as additional influences.RESULTS: Whereas similar types of facial responses were elicited independent of the relationship between sender and observer, the degree of facial expressiveness varied significantly, with increased expressiveness occurring in the presence of the partner. Interestingly, being with an experimenter decreased facial expressiveness only in women. Pain catastrophizing and the sex of the experimenter exhibited no substantial influence on facial responses.CONCLUSION: Variations in communicative relations had no effect on the elements of the facial pain language. The degree of facial expressiveness, however, was adapted to the relationship between sender and observer. Individuals suppressed their facial communication of pain toward unfamiliar persons, whereas they overtly displayed it in the presence of an intimate other. Furthermore, when confronted with an unfamiliar person, different situational demands appeared to apply for both sexes.


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