Emotion-specific Responses Research Articles

Emotion processing in youths with conduct problems: an fMRI meta-analysis

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies consistently indicate differences in emotion processing in youth with conduct problems. However, no prior meta-analysis has investigated emotion-specific responses associated with conduct problems. This meta-analysis aimed to generate an up-to-date assessment of socio-affective neural responding among youths with conduct problems. A systematic literature search was conducted in youths (ages 10–21) with conduct problems. Task-specific seed-based d mapping analyses examined responses to threatening images, fearful and angry facial expressions, and empathic pain stimuli from 23 fMRI studies, which included 606 youths with conduct problems and 459 comparison youths. Whole-brain analyses revealed youths with conduct problems relative to typically developing youths, when viewing angry facial expressions, had reduced activity in left supplementary motor area and superior frontal gyrus. Additional region of interest analyses of responses to negative images and fearful facial expressions showed reduced activation in right amygdala across youths with conduct problems. Youths with callous-unemotional traits also exhibited reduced activation in left fusiform gyrus, superior parietal gyrus, and middle temporal gyrus when viewing fearful facial expressions. Consistent with the behavioral profile of conduct problems, these findings suggest the most consistent dysfunction is found in regions associated with empathic responding and social learning, including the amygdala and temporal cortex. Youth with callous-unemotional traits also show reduced activation in the fusiform gyrus, consistent with reduced attention or facial processing. These findings highlight the potential role of empathic responding, social learning, and facial processing along with the associated brain regions as potential targets for interventions.

Identifying the duration of emotional stimulus presentation for conscious versus subconscious perception via hierarchical drift diffusion models

To investigate subliminal priming effects, different durations for stimulus presentation are applied ranging from 8 to 30 ms. This study aims to select an optimal presentation span whichleads to a subconscious processing.40 healthy participants rated emotional faces (sad, neutral or happy expression) presented for 8.3 ms, 16.7 ms and 25 ms. Alongside subjective and objectivestimulus awareness, task performance was estimated via hierarchical drift diffusion models.Participants reported stimulus awareness in 65 % of the 25 ms trials,in 36 % of 16.7 ms trials, and in 2.5 % of 8.3 ms trials.Emotion-dependent responses were reflected in decreased performance (drift rates, accuracy)during sad trials. The detection rate (probability of making a correct response) during 8.3 ms was 12.2 % and slightly above chance level (33.333 % for three response options) during 16.7 ms trials (36.8 %).The experiments suggest a presentation time of 16.7 ms as optimal for subconscious priming. An emotion-specific response was detected during 16.7 ms while the performanceindicates a subconscious processing.

Neonatal Musicality: Do Newborns Detect Emotions in Music?

This study aimed to explore healthy, term neonates’ behavioural and physiological responses to music using frame-by-frame analysis of their movements (Experiment 1; N = 32, 0–3 days old) and heart rate measurements (Experiment 2; N = 66, 0–6 days old). A ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ music was first validated by independent raters for their emotional content from a large pool of children’s songs and lullabies, and the effect of the emotions in these two music pieces and a control, no-music condition was compared. The results of the frame-by-frame behavioural analysis showed that babies had emotion-specific responses across the three conditions. Happy music decreased their arousal levels, shifting from drowsiness to sleep, and resulted in longer latencies in other forms of self-regulatory behaviour, such as sucking. The decrease in arousal was accompanied by heart rate deceleration. In the sad music condition, relative ‘stillness’ was observed, and longer leg stretching latencies were measured. In both music conditions, longer latencies of fine motor finger and toe movements were found. Our findings suggest that the emotional response to music possibly emerges very early ontogenetically as part of a generic, possibly inborn, human musicality.

Reduced recognition of dynamic facial emotional expressions and emotion-specific response bias in children with an autism spectrum disorder.

Emotion labelling was evaluated in two matched samples of 6-14-year old children with and without an autism spectrum disorder (ASD; N = 45 and N = 50, resp.), using six dynamic facial expressions. The Emotion Recognition Task proved to be valuable demonstrating subtle emotion recognition difficulties in ASD, as we showed a general poorer emotion recognition performance, in addition to some emotion-specific impairments in the ASD group. Participants' preference for selecting a certain emotion label, irrespective of the stimulus presented, played an important role in our results: response bias-corrected data still showed an overall decreased emotion recognition performance in ASD, but no emotion-specific impairments anymore. Moreover, ASD traits and empathy were correlated with emotion recognition performance.

Emotion-dependent responses in spinal cord neurons: A spinal fMRI study

Previous research has demonstrated that emotional stimuli receive preferential processing in the brain. In the current study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was utilized to determine if emotion-specific responses are detectable in the cervical spinal cord. During the passive (i.e., non-motoric) perception of images, activity was detected in the left dorsal and right ventral spinal cord in response to negative emotional stimuli; however, this pattern was reversed in response to neutral and positive stimuli. Critically, during active motoric responses to images, there was greater activity in the ventral cervical spinal cord in response to negative emotional stimuli than to neutral stimuli. These results demonstrate preferential motor responses to negative emotional images by the spinal cord, likely indicating an enhancement of activity in response to threat.

Electrophysiological correlates of affective blindsight

An EEG investigation was carried out in a patient with complete cortical blindness who presented affective blindsight, i.e. who performed above chance when asked to guess the emotional expressions on a series of faces. To uncover the electrophysiological mechanisms involved in this phenomenon we combined multivariate pattern recognition (MPR) with local field potential estimates provided by electric source imaging (ELECTRA). All faces, including neutral faces, elicited distinctive oscillatory EEG patterns that were correctly identified by the MPR algorithm as belonging to the class of facial expressions actually presented. Consequently, neural responses in this patient are not restricted to emotionally laden faces. Earliest non-specific differences between faces occur from 70 ms onwards in the superior temporal polysensory area (STP). Emotion-specific responses were found after 120 ms in the right anterior areas with right amygdala activation observed only later (∼ 200 ms). Thus, affective blindsight might be mediated by subcortical afferents to temporal areas as suggested in some studies involving non-emotional stimuli. The early activation of the STP in the patient constitutes evidence for fast activation of higher order visual areas in humans despite bilateral V1 destruction. In addition, the absence of awareness of any visual experience in this patient suggests that neither the extrastriate visual areas, nor the prefrontal cortex activation alone are sufficient for conscious perception, which might require recurrent processing within a network of several cerebral areas including V1.

Age differences in recognition of emotion in lexical stimuli and facial expressions.

Age differences in emotion recognition from lexical stimuli and facial expressions were examined in a cross-sectional sample of adults aged 18 to 85 (N = 357). Emotion-specific response biases differed by age: Older adults were disproportionately more likely to incorrectly label lexical stimuli as happiness, sadness, and surprise and to incorrectly label facial stimuli as disgust and fear. After these biases were controlled, findings suggested that older adults were less accurate at identifying emotions than were young adults, but the pattern differed across emotions and task types. The lexical task showed stronger age differences than the facial task, and for lexical stimuli, age groups differed in accuracy for all emotional states except fear. For facial stimuli, in contrast, age groups differed only in accuracy for anger, disgust, fear, and happiness. Implications for age-related changes in different types of emotional processing are discussed.

Multivariate Response Patterning of Fear and Anger

This study examined whether differential response patterns are associated with the emotions of fear and anger as compared to neutral and physical action imagery conditions in 27 right-handed male volunteers screened for imagery ability and alexithymia. Fear, anger, neutral, and action states were significantly differentiated on the basis of autonomic measures and facial electromyographic (EMG) responses. Discriminant function analyses (DFAs) using autonomic and facial EMG measures conducted separately on data from two experimental sessions revealed 78% and 72% correct classification of fear and anger, and neutral conditions, respectively. Cross-validation of the DFA using discriminant weights of the first session to classify the second session data led to a 66.5% correct classification of the fear and anger, and neutral imagery conditions. The combined average of both sessions revealed an 84% correct classification rate. Further, when subjective ratings were added to the discriminant function as a manipulation check for the experimental procedure, a 99% correct classification rate was obtained. These data indicate that emotion-specific response patterns for fear and anger are accurately differentiable from each other and from neutral imagery conditions. The findings provide support for the cognitive-physiological network models of physiological emotion specificity.

EEG and EMG responses to emotion-evoking stimuli processed without conscious awareness

Dichotic stimulus pairs were constructed with one word that was emotionally neutral and another that evoked either negative or positive feelings. Temporal and spectral overlap between the members of each pair was so great that the two words fused into a single auditory percept. Subjects were consciously aware of hearing only one word from most pairs; sometimes the emotion-evoking word was heard consciously, other times the neutral word was heard consciously. Subjects were instructed to let their thoughts wander in response to the word they heard, during which time EEG alpha activity over left and right frontal regions, and muscle activity (EMG) in the corrugator (“frowning”) and zygomatic (“smiling”) regions were recorded. Both EEG and EMG provided evidence of emotion-specific responses to stimuli that were processed without conscious awareness. Moreover both suggested relatively greater right hemisphere activity with unconscious rather than conscious processing.

Individual differences in imagery and the psychophysiology of emotion

Abstract The experiment examined the relationship between individual differences in imagery ability and physiological activity during affective and non-affective imagery. Self-described good and poor imagers were assessed before and after a training procedure which encouraged somatovisceral involvement in imagery. The two groups of imagers were indistinguishable on a variety of personality measures, including general intelligence, social desirability bias, and report of somatic or visceral anxiety. Picture-memory recall performance also failed to differentiate the two groups. In contrast, imagery of standard affective and action-oriented scripts produced significantly greater physiological activity for good imagers than for poor imagers, particularly after training. For good imagers, pattern of physiological activity vaned with content of imagery script (action, fear, and anger), suggesting that training amplified intrinsic, emotion-specific response dispositions. Whereas poor imagers were generally unres...