Emotional Face Processing Research Articles

Does alcohol affect emotional face processing via interoceptive pathways?

BackgroundOur brain uses interoceptive signals from the body to shape how we perceive emotions in others; however, whether interoceptive signals can be manipulated to alter emotional perceptions is unknown. Alcohol has acute effects both on emotional processing and on the physiological substrates supporting interoception. In this registered report, we examine whether alcohol administration triggers physiological changes that alter interoceptive signals and manipulate emotional face processing. Such knowledge will broaden understanding of the mechanisms by which alcohol affects emotional face processing. MethodsParticipants (n = 36) will be administered an alcohol or placebo beverage. Cardiovascular physiology will be recorded before and after administration. Participants will complete two behavioral tasks in which they view emotional faces presented in synchrony with different phases of the cardiac cycle (i.e., systole, diastole). This manipulation creates an index of how interoceptive signals amplify emotional face processing. HypothesesWe hypothesize that, compared to placebo, alcohol administration will disrupt the cardiac amplification of emotional face processing. We further explore whether this disruption depends on the nature and magnitude of changes in cardiovascular physiology after alcohol administration.

Processing of emotional faces in sexual offenders with and without child victims: An eye-tracking study with pupillometry

Socio-affective dysfunction is a risk-factor for sexual offense recidivism. However, it remains unknown whether men who have sexually offended with and without child victims show differences in eye scan paths and autonomic responsivity while viewing facial expressions of emotion. We examined differences in accuracy of emotion recognition, eye movements, and pupil dilation responses between sex offenders with child victims, sex offenders without child victims, and a group of non-offenders living in the community. Sex offenders without child victims looked for longer at the eyes than sex offenders with child victims and non-offenders. Men without child victims also scored higher for psychopathy linked disinhibition, and these traits were associated with looking longer at the eyes of afraid faces. We found no evidence for group differences in accuracy, visual attention to the mouth, or pupil dilation responses. Our findings have implications for understanding the nature of socio-affective dysfunction in sexual offenders.

Case of Asperger's Syndrome and Lesion of the Right Amygdala: Deficits in Implicit and Explicit Fearful Face Recognition.

Introduction: Studies of brain-damaged patients revealed that amygdala lesions cause deficits in the processing and recognition of emotional faces. Patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have similar deficits also related to dysfunctions of the limbic system including the amygdala.Methods: We investigated a male patient who had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. He also presented with a lesion of the right mesial temporal cortex, including the amygdala. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate neuronal processing during a passive viewing task of implicit and explicit emotional faces. Clinical assessment included a facial emotion recognition task.Results: There was no amygdala activation on both sides during the presentation of masked emotional faces compared to the no-face control condition. Presentation of unmasked happy and angry faces activated the left amygdala compared to the no-face control condition. There was no amygdala activation in response to unmasked fearful faces on both sides. In the facial emotion recognition task, the patient biased positive and neutral expressions as negative.Conclusions: This case report describes a male patient with right amygdala damage and an ASD. He displayed a non-response of the amygdala to fearful faces and tended to misinterpret fearful expressions. Moreover, a non-reactivity of both amygdalae to emotional facial expressions at an implicit processing level was revealed. It is discussed whether the deficient implicit processing of facial emotional information and abnormalities in fear processing could contribute and aggravate the patient's impairments in social behavior and interaction.

Altered functional connectivity during face processing in children born with very low birth weight.

Structural brain alterations have been reported in key emotional face processing regions following preterm birth; however, few studies have investigated the functional networks underlying these processes in children born with very low birth weight (VLBW). Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we examined the functional networks related to the implicit processing of happy and angry faces in 5-year-old VLBW (n = 28) and full-term (FT; n = 24) children. We found that VLBW children showed atypical recruitment of emotional face processing networks in theta (4–7 Hz) compared to FT children. VLBW children showed reduced theta connectivity during processing of angry faces only. This hypo-connected theta-band network was anchored in the left orbitofrontal and parietal regions, involved in the higher level processing of faces and emotion regulation. At the behavioural level, despite VLBW children performing within the normal range, FT children had significantly higher affect recognition scores. Our MEG results suggest a selective impairment in processing angry faces, which would negatively impact social functioning in VLBW children. In FT children, greater recruitment of this theta-band network was positively associated with improved affect recognition scores. Thus, our findings suggest an important role of theta oscillations in early face processing, deficits which may contribute to broader socio-emotional impairments in VLBW children.

Differential effects of faces and words in cognitive control in older adults with and without major depressive disorder: An emotional Stroop task study

Aging and major depressive disorders have been associated with impaired cognitive control. These deficits are also influenced by the affective valence and by the type of stimulus processed. Using an emotional Stroop task, the current study aims to examine cognitive control deficits and their association with emotion regulation in depression and the influence of the type of stimulus (words and faces) in this association. A total of 26 older patients with a major depressive disorder (MDD) (19 women; age range: 65–84 years) and 26 older healthy controls (18 women; age range: 65–80 years) participated in the study. The results showed that MDD individuals presented greater Stroop effects than their healthy controls and an absence of the conflict adaptation effect defined as a reduction of the influence of irrelevant stimulus dimensions after incongruent trials. Additionally, our results also showed that the processing of emotional words in depressed participants is more automatic than the processing of emotional faces. These findings suggest that older depressed individuals have greater difficulty in recognizing affective facial expressions than older healthy controls, while the over-learned behavior of word reading greatly reduces differences in the performance of the emotional Stroop task between groups (MDD and healthy controls).

The Course of Disease in Major Depressive Disorder Is Associated With Altered Activity of the Limbic System During Negative Emotion Processing

BackgroundBrain functional alterations during emotion processing in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) compared with healthy control subjects (HCs) are frequently reported. However, evidence for functional correlates of emotion processing with regard to MDD trajectories is scarce. This study investigates the role of lifetime disease course for limbic brain activation during negative emotional face processing in patients with MDD. MethodsIn a large sample of patients with MDD (n = 333; 58.55% female) and HCs (n = 333; 60.06% female), brain activation was investigated during a negative emotional face-processing task within a cross-sectional design. Differences between HC and MDD groups were analyzed. Previous disease course, characterized by 2 components, namely hospitalization and duration of illness, was regressed on brain activation of the amygdala, (para-)hippocampus, and insula in patients with MDD. ResultsPatients with MDD showed increased activation in the amygdala, insula, and hippocampus compared with HCs (all p values corrected for familywise error [pFWE] < .045). The hospitalization component showed negative associations with brain activation in the bilateral insula (right: pFWE = .026, left: pFWE = .019) and (para-)hippocampus (right: pFWE = .038, left: pFWE = .031). No significant association was found for the duration of illness component (all pFWE > .057). ConclusionsThis study investigated negative emotion processing in a large sample of patients with MDD and HCs. Our results confirm limbic hyperactivation in patients with MDD during negative emotion processing; however, this hyperactivation may resolve with a more severe lifetime disease course in the insula and (para-)hippocampus—brain regions involved in emotion processing and regulation. These findings need further replication in longitudinal studies.

An ERP study on facial emotion processing in young people with subjective memory complaints

Subjective memory complaints (SMCs) are commonly related to aging, but they are also presented by young adults. Their neurophysiological mechanisms are not thoroughly understood, although some aspects related to affective state have been mentioned. Here, we investigated whether facial emotion processing is different in young people with (n = 41) and without (n = 39) SMCs who were exposed to positive, negative, and neutral faces, by recording the event-related potential (ERP) activity. From the ERP activity, the N170 (an index of face processing) and the LPP (an index of motivated attention) components were extracted. Regarding the N170, results showed less amplitude for positive and neutral faces in the participants with SMCs than in those without SMCs. Moreover, women with SMCs displayed longer latencies for neutral faces than women without SMCs. No significant differences were found between the groups in the LPP component. Together, our findings suggest deficits in an early stage of facial emotion processing in young people with SMCs, and they emphasize the importance of further examining affective dimensions.

Seeing sadness: Comorbid effects of loneliness and depression on emotional face processing.

Background/ObjectiveLoneliness and depression are highly comorbid, and both are associated with social processing deficits. However, there is a paucity of research aimed at differentiating emotional face‐processing deficits that are comorbid to loneliness and depression versus those attributable to loneliness or depression only.Methods502 participants were recruited and screened for loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale) and depression (Beck Depression Inventory). Of those, seventy‐seven took part in a fully crossed 2 (loneliness; low/high) * 2 (depression; low/high) factorial between‐subjects design study to assess individual and comorbid effects of loneliness and depression on a computerized morphed facial emotion processing task.ResultsComorbidity was confirmed by a significant positive correlation between loneliness and depression. On the emotion processing task, loneliness was associated with an increased accuracy for sad faces and decreased accuracy for fearful faces and depression with decreased accuracy in identifying happy faces. Comorbid loneliness and depression resulted in an increased misattribution of neutral faces as sad, an effect that was also seen in those who were either only lonely or only depressed.ConclusionThis if the first study to tease out comorbid versus independent effects of loneliness and depression on social information processing. To the extent that emotional biases may act as risk factors for detrimental outcomes, our findings highlight the importance of treating both loneliness and depression.

Impact of ibuprofen and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma on emotion-related neural activation: A randomized, placebo-controlled trial

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen have shown initial promise in producing antidepressant effects. This is perhaps due to these drugs being peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) agonists, in addition to their inhibition of cyclooxygenase enzymes. Some, albeit mixed, evidence suggests that PPARγ agonists have antidepressant effects in humans and animals. This double-blind, placebo-controlled, pharmacologic functional magnetic resonance imaging (ph-fMRI) study aimed to elucidate the impact of ibuprofen on emotion-related neural activity and determine whether observed effects were due to changes in PPARγ gene expression. Twenty healthy volunteers completed an emotional face matching task during three fMRI sessions, conducted one week apart. Placebo, 200 mg, or 600 mg ibuprofen was administered 1 h prior to each scan in a pseudo-randomized order. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were collected at each session to isolate RNA for PPARγ gene expression. At the doses used, ibuprofen did not significantly change PPARγ gene expression. Ibuprofen dose was associated with decreased blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and fusiform gyrus during emotional face processing (faces-shapes). Additionally, PPARγ gene expression was associated with increased BOLD activation in the insula and transverse and superior temporal gyri (faces-shapes). No interaction effects between ibuprofen dose and PPARγ gene expression on BOLD activation were observed. Thus, results suggest that ibuprofen and PPARγ may have independent effects on emotional neurocircuitry. Future studies are needed to further delineate the roles of ibuprofen and PPARγ in exerting antidepressant effects in healthy as well as clinical populations.

On the processing of optimal performances: Studying arousal evoked by being correct and fast.

IntroductionResponses are optimal when they are accurate and fast. The present experiment investigated whether optimal responses evoke physiological arousal and whether performance affects the processing and evaluation of subsequent emotional material.MethodsParticipants performed a response‐choice task, where feedback was a colored square reflecting performance quality or a face whose expression (happy or angry) did not indicate any aspect of performance. In the occurrence of an emotional stimulus, participants had to express a judgment about the emotional strength. The experiment focused on differences in the electrodermal and brain electrophysiological activities evoked by optimal (correct‐fast) and suboptimal (correct‐slow) responses, along with modulations on the processing and interpretation of facial emotions.ResultsThe results showed that, compared to correct responses, incorrect responses elicited an augmented phasic skin conductance response (SCR) and enhanced response‐locked event‐related potentials. Importantly, among correct responses, the SCR and the correct‐related negativity (CRN) were larger for correct‐fast than correct‐slow responses. Performance also affected the processing of faces, irrespective of the emotion, but it did not change the subjective interpretation. The EPN evoked by angry and happy faces was less negative after optimal than suboptimal responses.ConclusionThese results indicate that the monitoring system is sensitive to detect correct‐fast responses, resulting in a state of physiological arousal that might guide the reinforcement of optimal performances.

Temporal lobe epilepsy alters neural responses to human and avatar facial expressions in the face perception network.

Background and ObjectiveAlthough avatars are now widely used in advertisement, entertainment, and business today, no study has investigated whether brain lesions in neurological patients interfere with brain activation in response to dynamic avatar facial expressions. The aim of our event‐related fMRI study was to compare brain activation differences in people with epilepsy and controls during the processing of fearful and neutral dynamic expressions displayed by human or avatar faces.MethodsUsing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined brain responses to dynamic facial expressions of trained actors and their avatar look‐alikes in 16 people with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and 26 controls. The actors' fearful and neutral expressions were recorded on video and conveyed onto their avatar look‐alikes by face tracking.ResultsOur fMRI results show that people with TLE exhibited reduced response differences between fearful and neutral expressions displayed by humans in the right amygdala and the left superior temporal sulcus (STS). Further, TLE was associated with reduced response differences between human and avatar fearful expressions in the dorsal pathway of the face perception network (STS and inferior frontal gyrus) as well as in the medial prefrontal cortex.ConclusionsTaken together, these findings suggest that brain responses to dynamic facial expressions are altered in people with TLE compared to neurologically healthy individuals—regardless of whether the face is human or computer‐generated. In TLE, areas sensitive to dynamic facial features and associated with processes relating to the self and others are particularly affected when processing dynamic human and avatar expressions. Our findings highlight that the impact of TLE on facial emotion processing must be extended to artificial faces and should be considered when applying dynamic avatars in the context of neurological conditions.

Apical intercalated cell cluster: A distinct sensory regulator in the amygdala.

GABAergic neurons regulate different aspects of information processing in the amygdala. Among these are clusters of intercalated cells (ITCs), which have been implicated in fear-related behaviors. Although a few of the ITC clusters have been studied, the functional role of apical ITCs (apITCs) is unknown. Here, we combine monosynaptic rabies tracing with optogenetics and demonstrate that apITCs receive synaptic input from medial geniculate nucleus (MGm), posterior intralaminar nucleus (PIN), and medial dorsal nucleus of the thalamus and from a diverse range of cortical areas including temporal association, entorhinal, insular, piriform, and somatosensory cortex. Upon fear learning, PIN/MGm inputs are strengthened, indicative of their involvement in fear behaviors. 3-D reconstruction of apITCs reveals local arborization and innervation of the dorsal striatum and lateral amygdala. We further show that apITCs provide sensory feedforward inhibition to LA principal cells, a putative mechanism for controlling plasticity during fear learning.

Sex Differences in Neural Activation During Emotional Processing of Subliminal and Supraliminal Faces

Emotion dysregulation has frequently been highlighted as an underlying mechanism of mood disorders. Due to the greater prevalence of mood disorders in females relative to males, it has been hypothesized that this difference may be related to the emergence of gender differences in emotion regulation during puberty. Specifically, differences in subliminal emotion processing could explain the variances in prevalence and symptom presentation.

Differential Development of Negative and Positive Emotion Processing in Adolescents

The role of face emotion processing in emotion regulation, a key aspect in adolescent depression, is unclear. Study goals were to examine a) whether adolescents perform worse when processing angry emotions vs. positive and neutral emotions; b) whether emotional “intensity” affects performance; d) the relationship between emotion processing and emotion regulation, defined as part of executive functions.

The Effects of Dynamic and Static Emotional Facial Expressions of Humans and Their Avatars on the EEG: An ERP and ERD/ERS Study.

This study aimed to examine whether the cortical processing of emotional faces is modulated by the computerization of face stimuli (”avatars”) in a group of 25 healthy participants. Subjects were passively viewing 128 static and dynamic facial expressions of female and male actors and their respective avatars in neutral or fearful conditions. Event-related potentials (ERPs), as well as alpha and theta event-related synchronization and desynchronization (ERD/ERS), were derived from the EEG that was recorded during the task. All ERP features, except for the very early N100, differed in their response to avatar and actor faces. Whereas the N170 showed differences only for the neutral avatar condition, later potentials (N300 and LPP) differed in both emotional conditions (neutral and fear) and the presented agents (actor and avatar). In addition, we found that the avatar faces elicited significantly stronger reactions than the actor face for theta and alpha oscillations. Especially theta EEG frequencies responded specifically to visual emotional stimulation and were revealed to be sensitive to the emotional content of the face, whereas alpha frequency was modulated by all the stimulus types. We can conclude that the computerized avatar faces affect both, ERP components and ERD/ERS and evoke neural effects that are different from the ones elicited by real faces. This was true, although the avatars were replicas of the human faces and contained similar characteristics in their expression.

Facial Expression Recognition Based on Deep Learning Convolution Neural Network: A Review

Facial emotional processing is one of the most important activities in effective calculations, engagement with people and computers, machine vision, video game testing, and consumer research. Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication, as they reveal a person's inner feelings and emotions. Extensive attention to Facial Expression Recognition (FER) has recently been received as facial expressions are considered. As the fastest communication medium of any kind of information. Facial expression recognition gives a better understanding of a person's thoughts or views and analyzes them with the currently trending deep learning methods. Accuracy rate sharply compared to traditional state-of-the-art systems. This article provides a brief overview of the different FER fields of application and publicly accessible databases used in FER and studies the latest and current reviews in FER using Convolution Neural Network (CNN) algorithms. Finally, it is observed that everyone reached good results, especially in terms of accuracy, with different rates, and using different data sets, which impacts the results.

Facial emotion detection in Vestibular Schwannoma patients with and without facial paresis

ABSTRACT This study investigates whether there exist differences in facial emotion detection accuracy in patients suffering from Vestibular Schwannoma (VS) due to their facial paresis. Forty-four VS patients, half of them with, and half of them without a facial paresis, had to classify pictures of facial expressions as being emotional or non-emotional. The visual information of images was systematically manipulated by adding different levels of visual noise. The study had a mixed design with emotional expression (happy vs. angry) and visual noise level (10% to 80%) as repeated measures and facial paresis (present vs. absent) and degree of facial dysfunction as between subjects’ factors. Emotion detection accuracy declined when visual information declined, an effect that was stronger for anger than for happy expressions. Overall, emotion detection accuracy for happy and angry faces did not differ between VS patients with or without a facial paresis, although exploratory analyses suggest that the ability to recognize emotions in angry facial expressions was slightly more impaired in patients with facial paresis. The findings are discussed in the context of the effects of facial paresis on emotion detection, and the role of facial mimicry, in particular, as an important mechanism for facial emotion processing and understanding.

A combined stimuli presentation for assessing facial emotion related N170, N250 and visual mismatch negativity in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Event-related potential (ERP) is a useful approach to assess the neurophysiological correlates of facial emotion processing. Previous studies examined the facial emotion recognition (FER) related ERPs (N170, N250, visual MisMatch Negativity) individually using ERP specific paradigms. This approach can be time-consuming and may not resemble real-life scenarios where an individual must process multiple stimuli simultaneously. The aim of the study was to assess the utility of a combined paradigm when compared to individual paradigms to measure N170, N250 and visual MisMatch Negativity (vMMN) in healthy controls (HC), utilizing emotion stimuli standardized in the Indian population. Further, the combined paradigm was examined in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) to detect the differences in ERPs compared to HC. Within paradigms, ERPs showed higher amplitudes for emotion compared to neutral stimuli suggesting that the paradigms were able to detect valence associated with emotional stimuli. The combined paradigm was able to elicit decipherable peaks of N170, N250 and vMMN similar to individual paradigms. ERP data quality as assessed by analytic Standardized Measurement Error (aSME) showed a satisfactory aggregate score of above 2 for all the three paradigms. Combined paradigm approaches to record ERPs in neuropsychiatric conditions has the advantage of reducing the time required for task administration, avoiding practice effects, better subject cooperation and participation.

Differential Modulation of Effective Connectivity in the Brain's Extended Face Processing System by Fearful and Sad Facial Expressions.

The processing of emotional facial expressions is underpinned by the integration of information from a distributed network of brain regions. Despite investigations into how different emotional expressions alter the functional relationships within this network, there remains limited research examining which regions drive these interactions. This study investigated effective connectivity during the processing of sad and fearful facial expressions to better understand how these stimuli differentially modulate emotional face processing circuitry. Ninety-eight healthy human adolescents and young adults, aged between 15 and 25 years, underwent an implicit emotional face processing fMRI task. Using dynamic causal modeling (DCM), we examined five brain regions implicated in face processing. These were restricted to the right hemisphere and included the occipital and fusiform face areas, amygdala, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Processing sad and fearful facial expressions were associated with greater positive connectivity from the amygdala to dlPFC. Only the processing of fearful facial expressions was associated with greater negative connectivity from the vmPFC to amygdala. Compared with processing sad faces, processing fearful faces was associated with significantly greater connectivity from the amygdala to dlPFC. No difference was found between the processing of these expressions and the connectivity from the vmPFC to amygdala. Overall, our findings indicate that connectivity from the amygdala and dlPFC appears to be responding to dimensional features which differ between these expressions, likely those relating to arousal. Further research is necessary to examine whether this relationship is also observable for positively valenced emotions.

Turning to the negative: attention allocation to emotional faces in adolescents with dysregulation profile\u2014an event-related potential study

Patients with irritability, temper outbursts, hyperactivity and mood swings often meet the dysregulation profile (DP) of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) or the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), which have been investigated over the past few decades. While the DP has emerged as a transdiagnostic marker with a negative impact on therapeutic outcome and psychosocial functioning, little is known about its underlying mechanisms such as attention and emotion regulation processes. In this study, we tested whether adolescent psychiatric patients (n = 27) with the SDQ-DP show impaired emotional face processing for task-irrelevant stimuli compared to psychiatric patients without the SDQ-DP (n = 30) and non-clinical adolescents (n = 21). Facial processing was tested with event-related potential (ERP) measures known to be modulated by attention (i.e., P1, N1, N170, P2, and Nc) during a modified Attention Network Task, to which task-irrelevant emotional stimuli (sad, fearful, and neutral faces) were added prior to the actual trial. The results reveal group differences in the orienting and in the conflicting network. Patients with DP showed a less efficient orienting network and the clinical control group showed a less efficient conflicting network. Moreover, patients with the dysregulation profile had a shorter N1/N170 latency than did the two control groups, suggesting that dysregulation in adolescents is associated with a faster but less arousing encoding of (task-irrelevant) emotional information and less top-down control.