Negative Emotional Faces Research Articles

HPA axis genetic variation, pubertal status, and sex interact to predict amygdala and hippocampus responses to negative emotional faces in school-age children

Accumulating evidence suggests a role for stress exposure, particularly during early life, and for variation in genes involved in stress response pathways in neural responsivity to emotional stimuli. Understanding how individual differences in these factors predict differences in emotional responsivity may be important for understanding both normative emotional development and for understanding the mechanisms underlying internalizing disorders, like anxiety and depression, that have often been related to increased amygdala and hippocampus responses to negatively valenced emotional stimuli. The present study examined whether stress exposure and genetic profile scores (10 single nucleotide polymorphisms within four hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis genes: CRHR1, NR3C2, NR3C1, and FKBP5) predict individual differences in amygdala and hippocampus responses to fearful vs. neutral faces in school-age children (7–12year olds; N=107). Experience of more stressful and traumatic life events predicted greater left amygdala responses to negative emotional stimuli. Genetic profile scores interacted with sex and pubertal status to predict amygdala and hippocampus responses. Specifically, genetic profile scores were a stronger predictor of amygdala and hippocampus responses among pubertal vs. prepubertal children where they positively predicted responses to fearful faces among pubertal girls and positively predicted responses to neutral faces among pubertal boys. The current results suggest that genetic and environmental stress-related factors may be important in normative individual differences in responsivity to negative emotional stimuli, a potential mechanism underlying internalizing disorders. Further, sex and pubertal development may be key moderators of the effects of stress-system genetic variation on amygdala and hippocampus responsivity, potentially relating to sex differences in stress-related psychopathology.

Impaired Facial Affect Perception in Unaffected Children at Familial Risk for Panic Disorder.

Recent studies suggest that impaired processing of facial affect has a familial component and may reflect a marker of liability to psychopathology. This study investigated whether facial affect processing is impaired in offspring with parental panic disorder (PD). Psychiatrically healthy children with parental PD (n = 51) and age and sex matched control children with no parental psychopathology (n = 51) completed a standard facial recognition task. High-risk children made more errors recognizing fearful faces than controls and misattributed fear and angry facial affect as surprised. High-risk females also made more errors recognizing sad faces compared to low risk females and misattributed sadness as fear. No difference emerged for self-rated anxiety while viewing facial expressions. However, self-rated anxiety correlated moderately with misrecognition of fearful facial affect in high-risk children. Overall, our data suggest that the ability to correctly recognize negative facial emotions is impaired in children with parental PD. Further research is needed to confirm if these deficits represent a trait marker of liability for PD and elucidate the contribution of genetic and family environmental influences.

Contributions to the Cognitive Study of Facial Recognition on Down Syndrome: A New Approximation to Exploring Facial Emotion Processing Style

Background: This paper aimed to explore the ability of people with Down syndrome (PWDS) in recognizing facial emotion by considering automatic cognitive processing levels of face recognition. Method: A sample of PWDS and participants with typical development (PWTD) participated in a set of two affective priming studies. In each study, participants had to categorize an emotional or neutral target face that was preceded by another emotional face. Stimuli presentation for each facial set (one face after another) was conducted by using an stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 300 ms with the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) set at 50 ms. The first affective priming study manipulated emotion congruency between prime and target emotional faces to explore emotion classification abilities and to identify the cognitive mechanisms underlying automatic recognition of some emotional faces. The second study explored the effect that gender of a face has over categorization of facial emotion and difficulty in recognizing negative facial expressions. Results: The results strongly suggest that not all of the PWDS present difficulties in recognizing negative facial emotions. PWDS’ performance pattern in categorizing emotion was similar to that of PWTDs if they had to use broad classification categories (e.g., emotion vs. no emotion). However, differences between both samples occurred if PWDS had to use a specific category task (e.g., classification of happiness, sadness, etc.). Conclusions: At least two emotion information processing styles can be identified in PWDS. Methodological and theoretical implications for exploring the emotional capabilities of people with DS are discussed.

P.3.f.012 Positive schizotypy associated negative facial emotion recognition and neurocognitive deficits

It has been suggested that different aspects of delusions (conviction, distress, preoccupation) respond to treatment at different rates, and that the cognitive bias of ‘Jumping to Conclusions’ (JTC) may predict treatment outcome. This study investigates changes in delusion dimensions using Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) and the role of JTC as a predictor of change during the initial 2 weeks of antipsychotic treatment on admission to hospital. Sixteen acute patients with delusions were assessed seven times per day for 14 days using computerised ESM. ESM assessed moment-by-moment experiences of affect, psychotic symptoms, and delusion dimensions. Clinical ratings were completed at baseline, 1 week and 2 weeks later. The 'beads' task was used to measure JTC at baseline. Delusion dimensions improved over the two weeks of antipsychotic treatment and admission to hospital. Different delusional dimensions changed at different rates, with distress and disruption being more responsive than conviction and preoccupation on both PSYRATS and ESM ratings. Eight out of 16 participants showed a JTC bias on the beads task at baseline. Exploratory analyses showed that JTC predicted changes in the ESM ratings of delusion conviction and distress, suggesting that reasoning biases may predict treatment response.

Double attention bias for positive and negative emotional faces in clinical depression: Evidence from an eye-tracking study

Background and objectivesAccording to cognitive models, attentional biases in depression play key roles in the onset and subsequent maintenance of the disorder. The present study examines the processing of emotional facial expressions (happy, angry, and sad) in depressed and non-depressed adults. MethodsSixteen unmedicated patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and 34 never-depressed controls (ND) completed an eye-tracking task to assess different components of visual attention (orienting attention and maintenance of attention) in the processing of emotional faces. ResultsCompared to ND, participants with MDD showed a negative attentional bias in attentional maintenance indices (i.e. first fixation duration and total fixation time) for sad faces. This attentional bias was positively associated with the severity of depressive symptoms. Furthermore, the MDD group spent a marginally less amount of time viewing happy faces compared with the ND group. No differences were found between the groups with respect to angry faces and orienting attention indices. LimitationsThe current study is limited by its cross-sectional design. ConclusionsThese results support the notion that attentional biases in depression are specific to depression-related information and that they operate in later stages in the deployment of attention.

5-HTTLPR/rs25531 polymorphism and neuroticism are linked by resting state functional connectivity of amygdala and fusiform gyrus.

The s/s-genotype of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism and the personality trait of neuroticism have both been associated with experiences of negative affect, anxiety and mood disorders, as well as an emotional processing bias towards negative facial emotions. On a neural level, this bias can be characterized by altered amygdala and fusiform gyrus (FFG) activity during perception of negative facial expressions. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging in a multi-center-sample of 178 healthy subjects of European descent, this study investigated the association of 5-HTTLPR (short s- and long l-allele) including the genotype of the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs25531 (A/G) within this region polymorphism, and trait neuroticism on resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) between amygdala and the FFG. Moreover, we aimed to identify additional brain regions with associations of 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 (combined according to its expression; low: s/s; high: l(A)/l(A); intermediate: s/l(A), s/l(G), l(G)/l(G), l(A)/l(G)) and trait neuroticism to amygdala rs-FC. Separate analyses for 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 and neuroticism (controlling for age, gender, handedness, and research site) revealed that s/s-homozygotes and individuals high in neuroticism obtained altered amygdala rs-FC in the right occipital face area, which is considered to be a "core component" of the face processing system. Importantly, effects of neuroticism were replicated across three independent research sites. Additionally, associations of 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 genotype and amygdala rs-FC were observed in the anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, whereas neuroticism was not related to rs-FC in these areas. The presented data implies that 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 variants and neuroticism are linked by resting state functional connectivity of amygdala and fusiform gyrus and suggests that variants of 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 genotype and different levels of neuroticism may partly account for altered processing of negative facial emotions.

Early Life Stress and Trauma and Enhanced Limbic Activation to Emotionally Valenced Faces in Depressed and Healthy Children

Previous studies have examined the relationships between structural brain characteristics and early life stress in adults. However, there is limited evidence for functional brain variation associated with early life stress in children. We hypothesized that early life stress and trauma would be associated with increased functional brain activation response to negative emotional faces in children with and without a history of depression. Psychiatric diagnosis and life events in children (starting at age 3-5 years) were assessed in a longitudinal study. A follow-up magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study acquired data (N = 115 at ages 7-12, 51% girls) on functional brain response to fearful, sad, and happy faces relative to neutral faces. We used a region-of-interest mask within cortico-limbic areas and conducted regression analyses and repeated-measures analysis of covariance. Greater activation responses to fearful, sad, and happy faces in the amygdala and its neighboring regions were found in children with greater life stress. Moreover, an association between life stress and left hippocampal and globus pallidus activity depended on children's diagnostic status. Finally, all children with greater life trauma showed greater bilateral amygdala and cingulate activity specific to sad faces but not the other emotional faces, although right amygdala activity was moderated by psychiatric status. These findings suggest that limbic hyperactivity may be a biomarker of early life stress and trauma in children and may have implications in the risk trajectory for depression and other stress-related disorders. However, this pattern varied based on emotion type and history of psychopathology.

Relationship status moderates avoidant attachment differences in positive emotion decoding accuracy

AbstractWe investigated attachment differences in the perception of facial emotion expressions. Participants completed a dimensional assessment of adult attachment and recognition accuracy tasks for positive and negative facial emotion expressions. Consistently, avoidant participants who were in romantic relationships, in comparison to singles, had lower decoding accuracy for facial expressions of positive emotions. The results were in line with the hypothesis that being in relationship functions as a naturalistic prime of avoidant persons' defensive tendency to ignore affiliative signals, facial expressions of positive emotion in this instance. The results inform emerging research on attachment and emotion perception by highlighting the role of perceivers' motivated social cognitions.

Primary vision and facial emotion recognition in early Parkinson's disease

BackgroundIn early stages of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD), lower order vision (LOV) deficits including reduced colour and contrast discrimination have been consistently reported. Data are less conclusive concerning higher order vision (HOV) deficits, especially for facial emotion recognition (FER). However, a link between both visual levels has been hypothesized. ObjectiveTo screen for both levels of visual impairment in early IPD. MethodsWe prospectively recruited 28 IPD patients with disease duration of 1.4+/−0.8years and 25 healthy controls. LOV was evaluated by Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue Test, Vis-Tech and Pelli-Robson test. HOV was examined by the Ekman 60 Faces Test and part A of the Visual Object and Space recognition test. ResultsIPD patients performed worse than controls on almost all LOV tests. The most prominent difference was seen for contrast perception at the lowest spatial frequency (p=0.0002). Concerning FER IPD patients showed reduced recognition of “sadness” (p=0.01). “Fear” perception was correlated with perception of low contrast sensitivity in IPD patients within the lowest performance quartile. Controls showed a much stronger link between “fear” perception” and low contrast detection. ConclusionAt the early IPD stage there are marked deficits of LOV performances, while HOV performances are still intact, with the exception of reduced recognition of “sadness”. At this stage, IPD patients seem still to compensate the deficient input of low contrast sensitivity, known to be pivotal for appreciation of negative facial emotions and confirmed as such for healthy controls in this study.

Visual search attentional bias modification reduced social phobia in adolescents

Background and objectivesAn attentional bias for negative information plays an important role in the development and maintenance of (social) anxiety and depression, which are highly prevalent in adolescence. Attention Bias Modification (ABM) might be an interesting tool in the prevention of emotional disorders. The current study investigated whether visual search ABM might affect attentional bias and emotional functioning in adolescents. MethodsA visual search task was used as a training paradigm; participants (n = 16 adolescents, aged 13–16) had to repeatedly identify the only smiling face in a 4 × 4 matrix of negative emotional faces, while participants in the control condition (n = 16) were randomly allocated to one of three placebo training versions. An assessment version of the task was developed to directly test whether attentional bias changed due to the training. Self-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms and self-esteem were measured pre- and post-training. ResultsAfter two sessions of training, the ABM group showed a significant decrease in attentional bias for negative information and self-reported social phobia, while the control group did not. There were no effects of training on depressive mood or self-esteem. LimitationsNo correlation between attentional bias and social phobia was found, which raises questions about the validity of the attentional bias assessment task. Also, the small sample size precludes strong conclusions. ConclusionsVisual search ABM might be beneficial in changing attentional bias and social phobia in adolescents, but further research with larger sample sizes and longer follow-up is needed.

Real-time Neurofeedback Using Functional MRI Could Improve Down-Regulation of Amygdala Activity During Emotional Stimulation: A Proof-of-Concept Study

The amygdala is a central target of emotion regulation. It is overactive and dysregulated in affective and anxiety disorders and amygdala activity normalizes with successful therapy of the symptoms. However, a considerable percentage of patients do not reach remission within acceptable duration of treatment. The amygdala could therefore represent a promising target for real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rtfMRI) neurofeedback. rtfMRI neurofeedback directly improves the voluntary regulation of localized brain activity. At present, most rtfMRI neurofeedback studies have trained participants to increase activity of a target, i.e. up-regulation. However, in the case of the amygdala, down-regulation is supposedly more clinically relevant. Therefore, we developed a task that trained participants to down-regulate activity of the right amygdala while being confronted with amygdala stimulation, i.e. negative emotional faces. The activity in the functionally-defined region was used as online visual feedback in six healthy subjects instructed to minimize this signal using reality checking as emotion regulation strategy. Over a period of four training sessions, participants significantly increased down-regulation of the right amygdala compared to a passive viewing condition to control for habilitation effects. This result supports the concept of using rtfMRI neurofeedback training to control brain activity during relevant stimulation, specifically in the case of emotion, and has implications towards clinical treatment of emotional disorders.

Prenatal hormonal exposure (2D:4D ratio) and strength of lateralisation for processing facial emotion

It has long been suggested that prenatal hormonal exposure influences the development of functional brain asymmetry, however there is relatively little research directly examining this association in non-verbal cognitive functioning. In this study the relationship between 2D:4D ratio and strength of lateralisation to the right hemisphere for processing facial emotion is examined in a large sample (N=475) of males and females. Left hand 2D:4D ratio was a significant predictor of strength of right hemisphere lateralisation for processing facial emotion, but particularly for the processing of facial expressions of disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise. Individuals with lower 2D:4D ratios, indicating higher levels of prenatal testosterone exposure, tended to be more strongly lateralised to the right hemisphere for the processing of both positive and negative facial emotion. However, there was no sex difference in this relationship, suggesting that the influence of prenatal testosterone is the same for males and females.

P.4.a.003 Negative and biased facial emotion recognition of social anxiety disorder patients

P.4.a.003 Negative and biased facial emotion recognition of social anxiety disorder patients

Paranoid males have reduced lateralisation for processing of negative emotions: An investigation using the chimeric faces test

Reduced strength of lateralisation in patients with schizophrenia has been reported in a number of studies. However the exact nature of this relationship remains unclear. In this study, lateralisation for processing emotional faces was measured using the chimeric faces test and examined in relation to paranoia in a non-clinical sample. For males only, those with higher scores on a paranoia questionnaire had reduced lateralisation for processing negative facial emotion. For females there were no significant relationships. These findings suggest that atypical patterns of lateralisation for processing emotional stimuli may be implicated in, or associated with, increased levels of paranoia.

주의력결핍 과잉행동장애의 이환 여부에 따른 얼굴표정 정서 인식의 차이

Objectives : It is known that children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) experience significant difficulty in recognizing facial emotion, which involves processing of emotional facial expressions rather than speech, compared to children without ADHD. This objective of this study is to investigate the differences in facial emotion recognition between children with ADHD and normal children used as control. Methods : The children for our study were recruited from the Suwon Project, a cohort comprising a non-random convenience sample of 117 nine-year-old ethnic Koreans. The parents of the study participants completed study questionnaires such as the Korean version of Child Behavior Checklist, ADHD Rating Scale, Kiddie-Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Present and Lifetime Version. Facial Expression Recognition Test of the Emotion Recognition Test was used for the evaluation of facial emotion recognition and ADHD Rating Scale was used for the assessment of ADHD. Results : ADHD children (N=10) were found to have impaired recognition when it comes to Emotional Differentiation and Contextual Understanding compared with normal controls (N=24). We found no statistically significant difference in the recognition of positive facial emotions (happy and surprise) and negative facial emotions (anger, sadness, disgust and fear) between the children with ADHD and normal children. Conclusion : The results of our study suggested that facial emotion recognition may be closely associated with ADHD, after controlling for covariates, although more research is needed.

Amygdala activation and its functional connectivity during perception of emotional faces in social phobia and panic disorder

Social phobia (SP) and panic disorder (PD) have been associated with aberrant amygdala responses to threat-related stimuli. The aim of the present study was to examine amygdala function and its connectivity with medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during emotional face perception in PD and SP, and the role of illness severity. Blood oxygen level dependent responses while perceiving emotional facial expressions were compared in 14 patients with PD, 17 patients with SP, 8 patients with comorbid PD and SP, and 16 healthy controls. We found that PD, but not SP, was associated with amygdala and lingual gyrus hypoactivation during perception of angry, fearful, happy and neutral faces, compared to healthy participants. No significant effect of PD and SP diagnoses was found on amygdala–mPFC connectivity. A positive correlation of anxiety symptom severity was found on amygdala-dorsal anterior cingulate and dorsal mPFC connectivity during perception of fearful faces. Amygdala hypoactivation suggests reduced responsiveness to positive and negative emotional faces in PD. Symptom severity, but not the presence of PD and SP diagnosis per se, explains most of the abnormalities in amygdala–mPFC connectivity during perception of fearful faces.

No Prior Entry for Threat-Related Faces: Evidence from Temporal Order Judgments

Previous research showed that threat-related faces, due to their intrinsic motivational relevance, capture attention more readily than neutral faces. Here we used a standard temporal order judgment (TOJ) task to assess whether negative (either angry or fearful) emotional faces, when competing with neutral faces for attention selection, may lead to a prior entry effect and hence be perceived as appearing first, especially when uncertainty is high regarding the order of the two onsets. We did not find evidence for this conjecture across five different experiments, despite the fact that participants were invariably influenced by asynchronies in the respective onsets of the two competing faces in the pair, and could reliably identify the emotion in the faces. Importantly, by systematically varying task demands across experiments, we could rule out confounds related to suboptimal stimulus presentation or inappropriate task demands. These findings challenge the notion of an early automatic capture of attention by (negative) emotion. Future studies are needed to investigate whether the lack of systematic bias of attention by emotion is imputed to the primacy of a non-emotional cue to resolve the TOJ task, which in turn prevents negative emotion to exert an early bottom-up influence on the guidance of spatial and temporal attention.

Processing own-age vs. other-age faces: Neuro-behavioral correlates and effects of emotion

Age constitutes a salient feature of a face and signals group membership. There is evidence of greater attention to and better memory for own-age than other-age faces. However, little is known about the neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying processing differences for own-age vs. other-age faces. Even less is known about the impact of emotion expressed in faces on such own-age effects. Using fMRI, the present study examined brain activity while young and older adult participants identified expressions of neutral, happy, and angry young and older faces. Across facial expressions, medial prefrontal cortex, insula, and (for older participants) amygdala showed greater activity to own-age than other-age faces. These own-age effects in ventral medial prefrontal cortex and insula held for neutral and happy faces, but not for angry faces. This novel and intriguing finding suggests that processing of negative facial emotions under some conditions overrides age-of-face effects.

A tale of two hemispheres: contrasting socioemotional dysfunction in right- versus left-lateralised semantic dementia.

OBJECTIVESemantic dementia, a subtype of frontotemporal lobar degeneration, is characterised by cross-modal loss of conceptual knowledge attributable to progressive degeneration of the left anterior temporal lobe. Much less is known regarding the clinical presentation of SD patients with predominantly right-lateralised atrophy. Recent reports emphasise marked socioemotional and behavioural disturbances in such cases. Given the importance of the right anterior temporal lobes in social cognition, we hypothesised that socioemotional functioning would be disproportionately affected in right versus left-lateralised SD cases.METHODSWe assessed well-characterised cases of predominantly right (n=10) and left (n=12) SD and 20 matched healthy controls on tests of emotion processing and interpersonal functioning.RESULTSRight SD cases showed disproportionate difficulties in the recognition of positive and negative facial emotions, specifically happiness and anger, compared with left SD cases. Deficits in anger recognition persisted in right SD despite covarying for facial and semantic processing. On a contextually rich task of emotion recognition using multimodal videos, no subgroup differences were evident. Finally, empathic concern was rated as significantly lower by caregivers of right versus left SD cases. Overall, the extent of socioemotional disturbance was associated with the degree of behavioural changes in SD.CONCLUSIONOur results reveal considerable overlap in the extent to which socioemotional processes are disrupted in left and right-lateralised cases of SD. Notably, however, right SD cases show disproportionate deficits for recognition of facial emotions and the capacity for empathic concern, supporting a specialised role for the right anterior temporal lobes in mediating these cognitive functions.

Effects of AKAP5 Pro100Leu Genotype on Working Memory for Emotional Stimuli

Recent investigations addressing the role of the synaptic multiadaptor molecule AKAP5 in human emotion and behavior suggest that the AKAP5 Pro100Leu polymorphism (rs2230491) contributes to individual differences in affective control. Carriers of the less common Leu allele show a higher control of anger as indicated by behavioral measures and dACC brain response on emotional distracters when compared to Pro homozygotes. In the current fMRI study we used an emotional working memory task according to the n-back scheme with neutral and negative emotional faces as target stimuli. Pro homozygotes showed a performance advantage at the behavioral level and exhibited enhanced activation of the amygdala and fusiform face area during working memory for emotional faces. On the other hand, Leu carriers exhibited increased activation of the dACC during performance of the 2-back condition. Our results suggest that AKAP5 Pro100Leu effects on emotion processing might be task-dependent with Pro homozygotes showing lower control of emotional interference, but more efficient processing of task-relevant emotional stimuli.