Abstract
Our prior research demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) exerted a modulatory role in ingroup bias in emotional mimicry. In this study, two experiments were conducted to further explore whether the rTPJ is a neural region for emotional mimicry or for the modulation of emotional mimicry by group membership in a sham-controlled, double-blinded, between-subject design. Both experiments employed non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to temporarily change the cortical excitability over the rTPJ and facial electromyography (fEMG) to measure facial muscle activations as an index of emotional mimicry. After the anodal or sham stimulation, participants in Experiment 1 passively viewed a series of happy clips, while participants in Experiment 2 viewed happy clips performed by ethnic ingroup and outgroup models. fEMG analyses revealed that participants in Experiment 1 showed the same degree of happy mimicry for both tDCS conditions (anodal vs. sham) and participants in Experiment 2 showed an ingroup bias in happy mimicry in the sham condition, which disappeared in the anodal condition. Taken together, the present study demonstrated that rTPJ plays a role in the modulation of emotional mimicry by group membership.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Brain Imaging and Stimulation, a section of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
After the anodal or sham stimulation, participants in Experiment 1 passively viewed a series of happy clips, while participants in Experiment 2 viewed happy clips performed by ethnic ingroup and outgroup models. facial electromyography (fEMG) analyses revealed that participants in Experiment 1 showed the same degree of happy mimicry for both transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) conditions and participants in Experiment 2 showed an ingroup bias in happy mimicry in the sham condition, which disappeared in the anodal condition
The present study aimed to explore the exact role of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in the modulation of ingroup bias in emotional mimicry, FIGURE 2 | Facial electromyography [zygomaticus major (ZM) and corrugator supercilii (CS)] activations under various conditions in Experiment 2; dots refer to individual datapoints
Summary
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Brain Imaging and Stimulation, a section of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Two experiments were conducted to further explore whether the rTPJ is a neural region for emotional mimicry or for the modulation of emotional mimicry by group membership in a sham-controlled, double-blinded, between-subject design Both experiments employed non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to temporarily change the cortical excitability over the rTPJ and facial electromyography (fEMG) to measure facial muscle activations as an index of emotional mimicry. We attributed our results rTPJ Modulates Emotional Mimicry to the possibility that self–ingroup (vs self–outgroup) overlap in mental representations changed accompanied with a change in cortical excitability over the rTPJ during tDCS implementation This was in line with the idea that self–other overlap is responsible for ingroup bias in emotional mimicry (Hühnel et al, 2018) and other areas such as empathy (Ellemers and Haslam, 2012). These two studies suggest that the rTPJ is associated with the modulation of facial mimicry by emotional expressions
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