Brain Activation in Contrasts of Microexpression Following Emotional Contexts

Ming Zhang,Fangbing Qu,Ke Zhao,Kaiyun Li,Xiaolan Fu

doi:10.3389/fnins.2020.00329

Abstract

The recognition of microexpressions may be influenced by emotional contexts. The microexpression is recognized poorly when it follows a negative context in contrast to a neutral context. Based on the behavioral evidence, we predicted that the effect of emotional contexts might be dependent on neural activities. Using the synthesized microexpressions task modified from the Micro-Expression Training Tool (METT), we performed an functional MRI (fMRI) study to compare brain response in contrasts of the same targets following different contexts. Behaviorally, we observed that the accuracies of target microexpressions following neutral contexts were significantly higher than those following negative or positive contexts. At the neural level, we found increased brain activations in contrasts of the same targets following different contexts, which reflected the discrepancy in the processing of emotional contexts. The increased activations implied that different emotional contexts might differently influence the processing of subsequent target microexpressions and further suggested interactions between the processing of emotional contexts and of microexpressions.

Highlights

Emotional information always affects the recognition of subsequent facial expression and exerts an important context effect (Wieser and Brosch, 2012)
Its recognition is influenced by emotional stimuli appearing before and after the microexpressions
Further analysis revealed that the accuracy rate for anger was significantly higher following neutral context than that following positive context, t(19) = 3.35, p = 0.009, d = 0.69; the accuracy rate for neutral was significantly higher following neutral context than that following negative or positive context, t(19) = 4.90, p < 0.001, d = 1.29; t(19) = 4.87, p < 0.001, d = 1.27; the accuracy rate for happiness was significantly higher following neutral context than that following negative context, t(19) = 3.43, p = 0.008, d = 0.66

Summary

Introduction

Emotional information always affects the recognition of subsequent facial expression and exerts an important context effect (Wieser and Brosch, 2012). It will facilitate the recognition of subsequent facial expressions if they convey the same emotional components (Werheid et al, 2005). Existing studies provide limited behavioral evidence for the presence of an effect of emotional context in microexpression recognition (Zhang et al, 2014, 2018). In order to recognize microexpressions more accurately in realistic emotional contexts, further evidence for the neural basis of the effect deriving from the emotional context is necessary

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion