What you morph is not what you get: Subjective and neural responses to facial expressions of emotion depend on perceived intensity/arousal (not on amount of morphing)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Ferreira-Santos ◽  
Mariana R. Pereira ◽  
Tiago O. Paiva ◽  
Pedro R. Almeida ◽  
Eva C. Martins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Electrophysiological Study ◽  
Objective Measure ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Supporting Evidence ◽  
Emotional Intensity ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Facial Stimuli ◽  
Facial Expressions Of Emotion ◽  
Processing Techniques

The behavioral and electrophysiological study of the emotional intensity of facial expressions of emotions has relied on image processing techniques termed ‘morphing’ to generate realistic facial stimuli in which emotional intensity can be manipulated. This is achieved by blending neutral and emotional facial displays and treating the percent of morphing between the two stimuli as an objective measure of emotional intensity. Here we argue that the percentage of morphing between stimuli does not provide an objective measure of emotional intensity and present supporting evidence from affective ratings and neural (event-related potential) responses. We show that 50% morphs created from high or moderate arousal stimuli differ in subjective and neural responses in a sensible way: 50% morphs are perceived as having approximately half of the emotional intensity of the original stimuli, but if the original stimuli differed in emotional intensity to begin with, then so will the morphs. We suggest a re-examination of previous studies that used percentage of morphing as a measure of emotional intensity and highlight the value of more careful experimental control of emotional stimuli and inclusion of proper manipulation checks.

Neural and Behavioral Responses to Ambiguous Facial Expressions of Emotion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Whalen ◽  
Maital Neta ◽  
M. Justin Kim ◽  
Alison M. Mattek ◽  
F. C. Davis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Conditioned Stimuli ◽  
Environmental Cue ◽  
Facial Expressions Of Emotion ◽  
Prefrontal Circuitry

When it comes to being social, there is no other nonverbal environmental cue that is more important for humans than the facial expression of another person. Here we consider facial expressions as naturally conditioned stimuli that, when presented as images in an experimental paradigm, evoke neural and behavioral responses that serve to decipher the predictive meaning of the expression. We will cover data showing that the expressions of others alter our attention to the environment, our biases in interpreting these facial expressions, and our neural responses within an amygdala-prefrontal circuitry related to normal variations in reported anxiety.

Consciousness and Emotional Facial Expression Recognition

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michela Balconi ◽  
Claudio Lucchiari
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Facial Expression ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Facial Expression Recognition ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Expression Recognition ◽  
Major Result ◽  
Emotional Facial Expression ◽  
Emotional Facial Expressions ◽  
Facial Stimuli

Abstract. In this study we analyze whether facial expression recognition is marked by specific event-related potential (ERP) correlates and whether conscious and unconscious elaboration of emotional facial stimuli are qualitatively different processes. ERPs elicited by supraliminal and subliminal (10 ms) stimuli were recorded when subjects were viewing emotional facial expressions of four emotions or neutral stimuli. Two ERP effects (N2 and P3) were analyzed in terms of their peak amplitude and latency variations. An emotional specificity was observed for the negative deflection N2, whereas P3 was not affected by the content of the stimulus (emotional or neutral). Unaware information processing proved to be quite similar to aware processing in terms of peak morphology but not of latency. A major result of this research was that unconscious stimulation produced a more delayed peak variation than conscious stimulation did. Also, a more posterior distribution of the ERP was found for N2 as a function of emotional content of the stimulus. On the contrary, cortical lateralization (right/left) was not correlated to conscious/unconscious stimulation. The functional significance of our results is underlined in terms of subliminal effect and emotion recognition.

Judgment of Facial Expressions of Emotion as a Function of Exposure Time

1984 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilles Kirouac ◽  
François Y. Doré
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Exposure Time ◽  
Facial Appearance ◽  
Facial Stimuli ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Facial Expressions Of Emotion ◽  
High Level

The purpose of this experiment was to study the accuracy of judgment of facial expressions of emotions that were displayed for very brief exposure times. Twenty university students were shown facial stimuli that were presented for durations ranging from 10 to 50 msec. The data showed that accuracy of judgment reached a fairly high level even at very brief exposure times and that human observers are especially competent to process very rapid changes in facial appearance.

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

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.

scholarly journals Risk for depression and neural responses to fearful facial expressions of emotion

2009 ◽  
Vol 194 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stella W. Y. Chan ◽  
Ray Norbury ◽  
Guy M. Goodwin ◽  
Catherine J. Harmer
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Opposite Effect ◽  
Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Facial Expressions Of Emotion ◽  
The Right ◽  
Left Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Left Middle ◽  
Risk For Depression

BackgroundDepression is associated with neural abnormalities in emotional processing.AimsThis study explored whether these abnormalities underlie risk for depression.MethodWe compared the neural responses of volunteers who were at high and low-risk for the development of depression (by virtue of high and low neuroticism scores; high-N group and low-N group respectively) during the presentation of fearful and happy faces using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).ResultsThe high-N group demonstrated linear increases in response in the right fusiform gyrus and left middle temporal gyrus to expressions of increasing fear, whereas the low-N group demonstrated the opposite effect. The high-N group also displayed greater responses in the right amygdala, cerebellum, left middle frontal and bilateral parietal gyri to medium levels of fearful v. happy expressions.ConclusionsRisk for depression is associated with enhanced neural responses to fearful facial expressions similar to those observed in acute depression.

Facial Expressions and Emotions in Indigenous Societies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Crivelli ◽  
Maria Gendron
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
The Body ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Supporting Evidence ◽  
Human Diversity ◽  
Recognition Of Facial Expressions ◽  
Facial Expressions Of Emotion ◽  
Basic And Applied Research ◽  
Do So

In this chapter we critically review and evaluate the evidence supporting one of the core assumptions of basic and applied research on emotion: the pan-cultural “recognition” of facial expressions of “emotion.” We do so by focusing on the body of evidence, as well as the methods used in emotion perception studies conducted in indigenous, small-scale societies. We also assess the criteria used to interpret the results as supporting evidence for the universality thesis. Finally, we look forward to future research in indigenous societies and outline two potential research paths to advance our understanding of human diversity.

scholarly journals Neurocognitive Effects of Preceding Facial Expressions on Perception of Subsequent Emotions

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shin Ah Kim ◽  
Sang Hee Kim
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Emotional Intensity ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Intensity Rating ◽  
The Right

In everyday life, individuals successively and simultaneously encounter multiple stimuli that are emotionally incongruent. Emotional incongruence elicited by preceding stimuli may alter emotional experience with ongoing stimuli. However, the underlying neural mechanisms of the modulatory influence of preceding emotional stimuli on subsequent emotional processing remain unclear. In this study, we examined self-reported and neural responses to negative and neutral pictures whose emotional valence was incongruent with that of preceding images of facial expressions. Twenty-five healthy participants performed an emotional intensity rating task inside a brain scanner. Pictures of negative and neutral scenes appeared, each of which was preceded by a pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant facial expression to elicit a degree of emotional incongruence. Behavioral results showed that emotional incongruence based on preceding facial expressions did not influence ratings of subsequent pictures’ emotional intensity. On the other hand, neuroimaging results revealed greater activation of the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in response to pictures that were more emotionally incongruent with preceding facial expressions. The dmPFC had stronger functional connectivity with the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) during the presentation of negative pictures that followed pleasant facial expressions compared to those that followed unpleasant facial expressions. Interestingly, increased functional connectivity of the dmPFC was associated with the reduced modulatory influence of emotional incongruence on the experienced intensity of negative emotions. These results indicate that functional connectivity of the dmPFC contributes to the resolution of emotional incongruence, reducing the emotion modulation effect of preceding information on subsequent emotional processes.

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