Feeling without Seeing? Engagement of Ventral, but Not Dorsal, Amygdala during Unaware Exposure to Emotional Faces

The ability to selectively perceive items in the environment may be modulated by the emotional content of those items. The neural mechanism that underlies the privileged processing of emotionally salient content is poorly understood. Here, using fMRI, we investigated this issue via a binocular rivalry procedure when face stimuli depicting fearful or neutral expressions competed for awareness with a house. Results revealed an interesting dissociation in the amygdala during rivalry condition: Whereas its dorsal component exhibited dominant activation to aware fearful faces, a ventral component was more active during the suppression of fearful faces. Moreover, during rivalry, the dorsal and ventral components of the amygdala were coupled with segregated cortical activations in the brainstem and medial PFC, respectively. In summary, this study points to a differential involvement of two clusters within the amygdala and their connected networks in naturally occurring perceptual biases of emotional content in faces.

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The Effect of Fear in the Periphery in Binocular Rivalry

Perception ◽

10.1068/p7157 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 40 (12) ◽

pp. 1395-1401 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Kay L Ritchie ◽

Rachel L Bannerman ◽

Arash Sahraie

Keyword(s):

Binocular Rivalry ◽

Emotional Content ◽

Fearful Faces ◽

Neutral Face ◽

Face Stimuli

The perceived dominance of percepts within a rival pair of images can be influenced by emotional content, with emotional images dominating over neutral images. We investigated this effect in the periphery. Rival gratings and (fearful or neutral) face/house pairs were viewed centrally and with the near edge positioned 1° and 4° from the fixation. Both fearful and neutral faces were perceived as dominant for significantly longer than houses, with fearful faces dominating for significantly longer than neutral faces at all three eccentricities. There was no difference between dominances at 1° and 4° eccentricity, and there was no difference in the dominance of the gratings at any eccentricity. Our findings show that face stimuli, and in particular fearful faces, continue to dominate perception in binocular rivalry even when viewed in the periphery.

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Spatially Filtered Emotional Faces Dominate during Binocular Rivalry

Brain Sciences ◽

10.3390/brainsci10120998 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (12) ◽

pp. 998

Author(s):

Maria Teresa Turano ◽

Fiorenza Giganti ◽

Gioele Gavazzi ◽

Simone Lamberto ◽

Giorgio Gronchi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Binocular Rivalry ◽

Visual Display ◽

Emotional Facial Expressions ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Emotional Faces ◽

Fearful Faces ◽

Affective Quality ◽

Spatial Frequencies ◽

Coarse Information ◽

First Time

The present investigation explores the role of bottom-up and top-down factors in the recognition of emotional facial expressions during binocular rivalry. We manipulated spatial frequencies (SF) and emotive features and asked subjects to indicate whether the emotional or the neutral expression was dominant during binocular rivalry. Controlling the bottom-up saliency with a computational model, physically comparable happy and fearful faces were presented dichoptically with neutral faces. The results showed the dominance of emotional faces over neutral ones. In particular, happy faces were reported more frequently as the first dominant percept even in the presence of coarse information (at a low SF level: 2–6 cycle/degree). Following current theories of emotion processing, the results provide further support for the influence of positive compared to negative meaning on binocular rivalry and, for the first time, showed that individuals perceive the affective quality of happiness even in the absence of details in the visual display. Furthermore, our findings represent an advance in knowledge regarding the association between the high- and low-level mechanisms behind binocular rivalry.

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Social Information Processing in Substance Use Disorders: Insights From an Emotional Go-Nogo Task

Frontiers in Psychiatry ◽

10.3389/fpsyt.2021.672488 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

James M. Bjork ◽

Lori Keyser-Marcus ◽

Jasmin Vassileva ◽

Tatiana Ramey ◽

David C. Houghton ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Substance Use ◽

Information Processing ◽

Social Information Processing ◽

Social Information ◽

Reaction Times ◽

Opioid Use ◽

Social Signals ◽

Emotional Faces ◽

Fearful Faces ◽

Fearful Face

Positive social connections are crucial for recovery from Substance Use Disorder (SUD). Of interest is understanding potential social information processing (SIP) mediators of this effect. To explore whether persons with different SUD show idiosyncratic biases toward social signals, we administered an emotional go-nogo task (EGNG) to 31 individuals with Cocaine Use Disorder (CoUD), 31 with Cannabis Use Disorder (CaUD), 79 with Opioid Use Disorder (OUD), and 58 controls. Participants were instructed to respond to emotional faces (Fear/Happy) but withhold responses to expressionless faces in two task blocks, with the reverse instruction in the other two blocks. Emotional faces as non-targets elicited more “false alarm” (FA) commission errors as a main effect. Groups did not differ in overall rates of hits (correct responses to target faces), but participants with CaUD and CoUD showed reduced rates of hits (relative to controls) when expressionless faces were targets. OUD participants had worse hit rates [and slower reaction times (RT)] when fearful faces (but not happy faces) were targets. CaUD participants were most affected by instruction effects (respond/“go” vs withhold response/“no-go” to emotional face) on discriminability statistic A. Participants were faster to respond to happy face targets than to expressionless faces. However, this pattern was reversed in fearful face blocks in OUD and CoUD participants. This experiment replicated previous findings of the greater salience of expressive face images, and extends this finding to SUD, where persons with CaUD may show even greater bias toward emotional faces. Conversely, OUD participants showed idiosyncratic behavior in response to fearful faces suggestive of increased attentional disruption by fear. These data suggest a mechanism by which positive social signals may contribute to recovery.

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Fear-induced increases in loss aversion are linked to increased neural negative-value coding

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience ◽

10.1093/scan/nsaa091 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (6) ◽

pp. 661-670

Author(s):

Stefan Schulreich ◽

Holger Gerhardt ◽

Dar Meshi ◽

Hauke R Heekeren

Keyword(s):

Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽

Magnetic Resonance ◽

Loss Aversion ◽

Neural Mechanism ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽

Resonance Imaging ◽

Fearful Faces ◽

Value Coding

Abstract Human decisions are often influenced by emotions. An economically relevant example is the role of fear in generating loss aversion. Previous research implicates the amygdala as a key brain structure in the experience of fear and loss aversion. The neural mechanism behind emotional influences on loss aversion is, however, unclear. To address this, we measured brain activation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants made decisions about monetary gambles after viewing fearful or neutral faces. We observed that loss aversion following the presentation of neutral faces was mainly predicted by greater deactivations for prospective losses (relative to activations for prospective gains) in several brain regions, including the amygdala. By contrast, increases in loss aversion following the presentation of fearful faces were mainly predicted by greater activations for prospective losses. These findings suggest a fear-induced shift from positive to negative value coding that reflects a context-dependent involvement of distinct valuation processes.

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Saccadic latency is modulated by emotional content of spatially filtered face stimuli.

Emotion ◽

10.1037/a0028677 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 12 (6) ◽

pp. 1384-1392 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Rachel L. Bannerman ◽

Paul B. Hibbard ◽

Kirsty Chalmers ◽

Arash Sahraie

Keyword(s):

Emotional Content ◽

Saccadic Latency ◽

Face Stimuli

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Overt and covert attention shifts to emotional faces – combining EEG, Eye-tracking and a Go/No-go paradigm

10.31234/osf.io/uz7gj ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Louisa Kulke ◽

Lena Brümmer ◽

Arezoo Pooresmaeili ◽

Annekathrin Schacht

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Eye Tracking ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Emotional Content ◽

Neural Mechanisms ◽

Covert Attention ◽

Emotional Expressions ◽

Brain Potentials ◽

Emotional Faces ◽

Attention Shifts

In everyday life, faces with emotional expressions quickly attract attention and eye-movements. To study the neural mechanisms of such emotion-driven attention by means of event-related brain potentials (ERPs), tasks that employ covert shifts of attention are commonly used, in which participants need to inhibit natural eye-movements towards stimuli. It remains, however, unclear how shifts of attention to emotional faces with and without eye-movements differ from each other. The current preregistered study aimed to investigate neural differences between covert and overt emotion-driven attention. We combined eye-tracking with measurements of ERPs to compare shifts of attention to faces with happy, angry or neutral expressions when eye-movements were either executed (Go conditions) or withheld (No-go conditions). Happy and angry faces led to larger EPN amplitudes, shorter latencies of the P1 component and faster saccades, suggesting that emotional expressions significantly affected shifts of attention. Several ERPs (N170, EPN, LPC), were augmented in amplitude when attention was shifted with an eye-movement, indicating an enhanced neural processing of faces if eye-movements had to be executed together with a reallocation of attention. However, the modulation of ERPs by facial expressions did not differ between the Go and No-go conditions, suggesting that emotional content enhances both covert and overt shifts of attention. In summary, our results indicate that overt and covert attention shifts differ but are comparably affected by emotional content.

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Experience And Emotional Face Processing In Infancy

10.32920/ryerson.14647365.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Kristina Safar

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Face Processing ◽

Picture Book ◽

Longitudinal Design ◽

Paired Comparison ◽

Potential Effect ◽

Emotional Faces ◽

Fearful Faces ◽

Emotional Face Processing ◽

Emotional Face

Experience is suggested to shape the development of emotion processing abilities in infancy. The current dissertation investigated the influence of familiarity with particular face types and emotional faces on emotional face processing within the first year of life using a variety of metrics. The first study examined whether experience with a particular face type (own- vs. other-race faces) affected 6- and 9-month-old infants’ attentional looking preference to fearful facial expressions in a visual paired-comparison (VPC) task. Six-month-old infants showed an attentional preference for fearful over happy facial expressions when expressed by own-race faces, but not other race-faces, whereas 9-month-old infants showed an attentional preference for fearful expressions when expressed by both own-race and other-race faces, suggesting that experience influences how infants deploy their attention to different facial expressions. Using a longitudinal design, the second study examined whether exposure to emotional faces via picture book training at 3 months of age affected infants’ allocation of attention to fearful over happy facial expressions in both a VPC and ERP task at 5 months of age. In the VPC task, 3- and 5-month-olds without exposure to emotional faces demonstrated greater allocation of attention to fearful facial expressions. Differential exposure to emotional faces revealed a potential effect of training: 5-month-olds infants who experienced fearful faces showed an attenuated preference for fearful facial expressions compared to infants who experienced happy faces or no training. Three- and 5-month-old infants did not, however, show differential neural processing of happy and fearful facial expressions. The third study examined whether 5- and 7-month-old infants can match fearful and happy faces and voices in an intermodal preference task, and whether exposure to happy or fearful faces influences this ability. Neither 5- nor 7-month-old infants showed intermodal matching of happy or fearful facial expressions, regardless of exposure to emotional faces. Overall, results from this series of studies add to our understanding of how experience influences the development of emotional face processing in infancy.

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Oxytocin enhances basolateral amygdala activation and functional connectivity in autistic women while processing emotional faces

10.31219/osf.io/yjpe9 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Tanya Procyshyn ◽

MIchael Lombardo ◽

Meng-Chuan Lai ◽

Bonnie Auyeung ◽

Sarah Crockford ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Basolateral Amygdala ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Placebo Condition ◽

Emotional Faces ◽

Amygdala Activation ◽

Within Subjects ◽

Emotional Information Processing ◽

Face Stimuli ◽

The Right

Background: Oxytocin is hypothesized to promote positive social interactions by enhancing the salience of social stimuli, which may be reflected by altered amygdala activation. While previous neuroimaging studies have reported that oxytocin enhances amygdala activation to emotional face stimuli in autistic men, effects in autistic women remain unclear. Methods: The influence of intranasal oxytocin on neural response to emotional faces vs. shapes were tested in 16 autistic and 21 non-autistic women by fMRI in a placebo-controlled, within-subjects, cross-over design. Effects of group (autistic vs. non-autistic) and drug condition (oxytocin vs. placebo) on the activation and functional connectivity of the basolateral amygdala, the brain’s “salience detector”, were assessed. Relationships between individual differences in autistic-like traits, social anxiety, salivary oxytocin levels, and amygdala activation were also explored.Results: Autistic and non-autistic women showed minimal activation differences in the placebo condition. Significant drug × group interactions were observed for both amygdala activation and functional connectivity. Oxytocin increased left basolateral amygdala activation among autistic women (35 voxel cluster, MNI coordinates of peak voxel = -22 -10 -28; mean change=+0.079%, t=3.159, ptukey=0.0166), but not non-autistic women (mean change =+0.003%, t=0.153, ptukey=0.999). Furthermore, oxytocin increased functional connectivity of the right basolateral amygdala with brain regions associated with socio-emotional information processing in autistic women, but not non-autistic women, thereby attenuating group connectivity differences observed in the placebo condition. Conclusions: This work demonstrates that intranasal oxytocin increases basolateral amygdala activation and connectivity in autistic women while processing emotional faces, which extends and specifies previous findings in autistic men.

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Binocular rivalry suppression disrupts recovery from motion adaptation

Visual Neuroscience ◽

10.1017/s0952523800009603 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 143-148 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Heidi Wiesenfelder ◽

Randolph Blake

Keyword(s):

Binocular Rivalry ◽

Cortical Neurons ◽

Storage Period ◽

Test Period ◽

The Other ◽

Test Target ◽

High Contrast ◽

Motion Adaptation ◽

Rivalry Condition ◽

After Effect

AbstractThe motion after-effect (MAE) lasts longer when the test period does not immediately follow adaptation, a phenomenon called storage. Does storage of the MAE occur if the test target is present but rendered phenomenally invisible owing to the presence of a rival target presented to the other eye during the storage period? Our experiment addressed this question. Following adaptation to a drifting grating, an intervening period preceded testing with a stationary grating. During this period, the adapted eye either viewed the test target immediately or was occluded, and the unadapted eye either viewed a high-contrast rival target or was occluded. Thus four conditions were employed. The duration of the residual MAE was found to be longer for the rivalry condition (grating and rival target viewed) than for the normal MAE condition (grating viewed), and comparable to that in the stored MAE condition (both eyes occluded). Thus, the MAE is stored when the test target is rendered invisible due to binocular rivalry, indicating that a suppressed target is ineffective at promoting decay of the MAE. So while suppression does not prevent information about the adapting grating from reaching the site of generation of the MAE (Lehmkuhle & Fox, 1975), it can prevent information about the test target from reaching the site of the stored MAE. Current models attribute the MAE to reduced responsiveness of direction-selective cortical neurons (Sutherland, 1961; Barlow & Hill, 1963). Thus, storage should reflect a differential return of these adapted cells to preadapted response levels, dependent on postadaptation stimulation. From our results we deduce that storage does not occur at all sites at which motion adaptation occurs. Rather, decay of the MAE is dependent on postadaptation stimulation at higher levels of adaptation, and independent at earlier levels.

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Effects of Neutral and Fearful Mood on Duration Estimation of Neutral and Fearful Face Stimuli

Timing & Time Perception ◽

10.1163/22134468-00002060 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 30-47 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Lisa V. Eberhardt ◽

Anke Huckauf ◽

Katrin M. Kliegl

Keyword(s):

Mood Induction ◽

Temporal Perception ◽

Stimulus Quality ◽

Subjective Duration ◽

Fearful Faces ◽

Fearful Face ◽

Neutral Mood ◽

Skin Conductance Levels ◽

Face Stimuli ◽

Duration Estimation

Previous research showed that fearful faces produce longer temporal estimates than neutral faces. This study probed whether fearful mood enhances this effect. In two experiments, participants viewed neutral and threatening film excerpts and subsequently evaluated the duration of neutral and fearful faces in a bisection task. In Experiment 1, where neutral mood was induced before fearful mood, skin conductance levels (SCLs) and subjective emotion ratings indicated successful mood induction. Compared to neutral mood, fearful mood lengthened subjective duration estimates irrespective of stimulus quality. Additionally, stimuli of fearful faces were temporally overestimated relative to neutral faces; but only in neutral, not in fearful mood. In Experiment 2, where fearful mood was induced before neutral mood, subjective emotion ratings, but not SCLs, indicated successful mood induction. Moreover, neither mood nor facial expressions influenced duration estimation. Taken together, the results show that fearful mood may accelerate an internal pacemaker but does not enhance temporal perception differences between fearful and neutral faces. Additionally, this study highlights the importance of dissociating stimulus, state, and trait emotionality for our understanding of emotional influences on temporal perception.

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