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Siklos-Whillans J, Itier RJ. Effects of Inversion and Fixation Location on the Processing of Face and House Stimuli - A Mass Univariate Analysis. Brain Topogr 2024; 37:972-992. [PMID: 39042323 DOI: 10.1007/s10548-024-01068-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/12/2024] [Accepted: 07/05/2024] [Indexed: 07/24/2024]
Abstract
Most Event Related Potential studies investigating the time course of visual processing have focused mainly on the N170 component. Stimulus orientation affects the N170 amplitude for faces but not for objects, a finding interpreted as reflecting holistic/configural processing for faces and featural processing for objects. Furthermore, while recent studies suggest where on the face people fixate impacts the N170, fixation location effects have not been investigated in objects. A data-driven mass univariate analysis (all time points and electrodes) was used to investigate the time course of inversion and fixation location effects on the neural processing of faces and houses. Strong and widespread orientation effects were found for both faces and houses, from 100-350ms post-stimulus onset, including P1 and N170 components, and later, a finding arguing against a lack of holistic processing for houses. While no clear fixation effect was found for houses, fixation location strongly impacted face processing early, reflecting retinotopic mapping around the C2 and P1 components, and during the N170-P2 interval. Face inversion effects were also largest for nasion fixation around 120ms. The results support the view that facial feature integration (1) depends on which feature is being fixated and where the other features are situated in the visual field, (2) occurs maximally during the P1-N170 interval when fixation is on the nasion and (3) continues past 200ms, suggesting the N170 peak, where weak effects were found, might be an inflexion point between processes rather than the end of a feature integration into a whole process.
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Affiliation(s)
- James Siklos-Whillans
- Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada
| | - Roxane J Itier
- Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada.
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2
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Chen NX, Wei P. Task demand modulates the effects of reward learning on emotional stimuli. Cogn Neurodyn 2024; 18:2263-2275. [PMID: 39555264 PMCID: PMC11564495 DOI: 10.1007/s11571-024-10082-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/29/2022] [Revised: 01/19/2024] [Accepted: 01/28/2024] [Indexed: 11/19/2024] Open
Abstract
The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the ability of task demand in modulating the effect of reward association on the processing of emotional faces. In the learning phase, a high or low reward probability was paired with male or female facial photos of angry, happy, or neutral expressions. Then, in the test phase, task demand was manipulated by asking participants to discriminate the emotionality or the gender of the pre-learned face with no reward at stake. The ERP results in the test phase revealed that the fronto-central N1 (60-100 ms) and the VPP (160-210 ms) components were sensitive to the interaction between reward and emotion, in that the differences between the mean amplitudes for high- and low-reward conditions were significantly larger in the neutral face and angry face conditions than in the happy face condition. Moreover, reward association and task demand showed a significant interaction over the right hemisphere for the N170 component (140-180 ms), with amplitude difference between high- and low-reward conditions being larger in the emotion task than that in the gender task. The later N2pc component exhibited an interaction between task demand and emotionality, in that happy faces elicited larger N2pc difference waves than angry and neutral faces did in the emotion task, but neutral faces elicited larger N2pc difference waves than angry faces did in the gender task. The N2pc effect aligned with behavioral performance. These results suggest that reward association acts as an 'emotional tagging' to imbue neutral or angry faces with motivational significance at early time windows. Task demand functions in a top-down way to modulate the deployment of attentional resources at the later attentional selection stage, but does not affect the early automatic processing of either emotion or reward association.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ning-Xuan Chen
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, School of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, 100048 China
| | - Ping Wei
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, School of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, 100048 China
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3
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Chalk PT, Pegna AJ. Predictability modulates the early neural coding of spatially unattended fearful faces. Cortex 2024; 179:286-300. [PMID: 39216289 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.07.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/22/2024] [Revised: 05/20/2024] [Accepted: 07/18/2024] [Indexed: 09/04/2024]
Abstract
In this study, we assessed whether predictability affected the early processing of facial expressions. To achieve this, we measured lateralised early- and mid-latency event-related potentials associated with visual processing. Twenty-two participants were shown pairs of bilaterally presented fearful, happy, angry, or scrambled faces. Participants were required to identify angry faces on a spatially attended side whilst ignoring happy, fearful, and scrambled faces. Each block began with the word HAPPY or FEARFUL which informed participants the probability at which these faces would appear. Attention effects were found for the lateralised P1, suggesting that emotions do not modulate the P1 differentially, nor do predictions relating to emotions. Pairwise comparisons demonstrated that, when spatially unattended, unpredicted fearful faces produced larger lateralised N170 amplitudes compared to predicted fearful faces and unpredicted happy faces. Finally, attention towards faces increased lateralised EPN amplitudes, as did both fearful expressions and low predictability. Thus, we demonstrate that the N170 and EPN are sensitive to top-down predictions relating to facial expressions and that low predictability appears to specifically affect the early encoding of fearful faces when unattended, possibly to initiate attentional capture.
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Affiliation(s)
- Philip T Chalk
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
| | - Alan J Pegna
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
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4
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Sun M, Xing W, Yu W, Slevc LR, Li W. ERP evidence for cross-domain prosodic priming from music to speech. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2024; 254:105439. [PMID: 38945108 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105439] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/15/2023] [Revised: 06/19/2024] [Accepted: 06/25/2024] [Indexed: 07/02/2024]
Abstract
Considerable work has investigated similarities between the processing of music and language, but it remains unclear whether typical, genuine music can influence speech processing via cross-domain priming. To investigate this, we measured ERPs to musical phrases and to syntactically ambiguous Chinese phrases that could be disambiguated by early or late prosodic boundaries. Musical primes also had either early or late prosodic boundaries and we asked participants to judge whether the prime and target have the same structure. Within musical phrases, prosodic boundaries elicited reduced N1 and enhanced P2 components (relative to the no-boundary condition) and musical phrases with late boundaries exhibited a closure positive shift (CPS) component. More importantly, primed target phrases elicited a smaller CPS compared to non-primed phrases, regardless of the type of ambiguous phrase. These results suggest that prosodic priming can occur across domains, supporting the existence of common neural processes in music and language processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mingjiang Sun
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Huanghe Road 850, Dalian 116029, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian 116029, China
| | - Weijing Xing
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Huanghe Road 850, Dalian 116029, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian 116029, China
| | - Wenjing Yu
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Huanghe Road 850, Dalian 116029, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian 116029, China
| | - L Robert Slevc
- Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
| | - Weijun Li
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Huanghe Road 850, Dalian 116029, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian 116029, China.
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Itier RJ, Durston AJ. Mass-univariate analysis of scalp ERPs reveals large effects of gaze fixation location during face processing that only weakly interact with face emotional expression. Sci Rep 2023; 13:17022. [PMID: 37813928 PMCID: PMC10562468 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-44355-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2023] [Accepted: 10/06/2023] [Indexed: 10/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Decoding others' facial expressions is critical for social functioning. To clarify the neural correlates of expression perception depending on where we look on the face, three combined gaze-contingent ERP experiments were analyzed using robust mass-univariate statistics. Regardless of task, fixation location impacted face processing from 50 to 350 ms, maximally around 120 ms, reflecting retinotopic mapping around C2 and P1 components. Fixation location also impacted majorly the N170-P2 interval while weak effects were seen at the face-sensitive N170 peak. Results question the widespread assumption that faces are processed holistically into an indecomposable perceptual whole around the N170. Rather, face processing is a complex and view-dependent process that continues well beyond the N170. Expression and fixation location interacted weakly during the P1-N170 interval, supporting a role for the mouth and left eye in fearful and happy expression decoding. Expression effects were weakest at the N170 peak but strongest around P2, especially for fear, reflecting task-independent affective processing. Results suggest N170 reflects a transition between processes rather than the maximum of a holistic face processing stage. Focus on this peak should be replaced by data-driven analyses of the epoch using robust statistics to fully unravel the early visual processing of faces and their affective content.
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Affiliation(s)
- Roxane J Itier
- Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada.
| | - Amie J Durston
- Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada
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Schindler S, Bruchmann M, Straube T. Beyond facial expressions: A systematic review on effects of emotional relevance of faces on the N170. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2023; 153:105399. [PMID: 37734698 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105399] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/08/2023] [Revised: 09/15/2023] [Accepted: 09/17/2023] [Indexed: 09/23/2023]
Abstract
The N170 is the most prominent electrophysiological signature of face processing. While facial expressions reliably modulate the N170, there is considerable variance in N170 modulations by other sources of emotional relevance. Therefore, we systematically review and discuss this research area using different methods to manipulate the emotional relevance of inherently neutral faces. These methods were categorized into (1) existing pre-experimental affective person knowledge (e.g., negative attitudes towards outgroup faces), (2) experimentally instructed affective person knowledge (e.g., negative person information), (3) contingency-based affective learning (e.g., fear-conditioning), or (4) the immediate affective context (e.g., emotional information directly preceding the face presentation). For all categories except the immediate affective context category, the majority of studies reported significantly increased N170 amplitudes depending on the emotional relevance of faces. Furthermore, the potentiated N170 was observed across different attention conditions, supporting the role of the emotional relevance of faces on the early prioritized processing of configural facial information, regardless of low-level differences. However, we identified several open research questions and suggest venues for further research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian Schindler
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany.
| | - Maximilian Bruchmann
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
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7
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Ziereis A, Schacht A. Motivated attention and task relevance in the processing of cross-modally associated faces: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2023; 23:1244-1266. [PMID: 37353712 PMCID: PMC10545602 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-023-01112-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/09/2023] [Indexed: 06/25/2023]
Abstract
It has repeatedly been shown that visually presented stimuli can gain additional relevance by their association with affective stimuli. Studies have shown effects of associated affect in event-related potentials (ERP) like the early posterior negativity (EPN), late positive complex (LPC), and even earlier components as the P1 or N170. However, findings are mixed as to the extent associated affect requires directed attention to the emotional quality of a stimulus and which ERP components are sensitive to task instructions during retrieval. In this preregistered study ( https://osf.io/ts4pb ), we tested cross-modal associations of vocal affect-bursts (positive, negative, neutral) to faces displaying neutral expressions in a flash-card-like learning task, in which participants studied face-voice pairs and learned to correctly assign them to each other. In the subsequent EEG test session, we applied both an implicit ("old-new") and explicit ("valence-classification") task to investigate whether the behavior at retrieval and neurophysiological activation of the affect-based associations were dependent on the type of motivated attention. We collected behavioral and neurophysiological data from 40 participants who reached the preregistered learning criterium. Results showed EPN effects of associated negative valence after learning and independent of the task. In contrast, modulations of later stages (LPC) by positive and negative associated valence were restricted to the explicit, i.e., valence-classification, task. These findings highlight the importance of the task at different processing stages and show that cross-modal affect can successfully be associated to faces.
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Affiliation(s)
- Annika Ziereis
- Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior, Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology Laboratory, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Goßlerstraße 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
| | - Anne Schacht
- Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior, Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology Laboratory, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Goßlerstraße 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
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Xu Q, Sommer W, Recio G. Control over emotional facial expressions: Evidence from facial EMG and ERPs in a Stroop-like task. Biol Psychol 2023; 181:108611. [PMID: 37302517 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108611] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2023] [Revised: 05/04/2023] [Accepted: 06/06/2023] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Facial expressions carry important social signals that must be precisely regulated despite potentially conflicting demands on veridicality, communicative intent, and the social situation. In a sample of 19 participants we investigated the challenges of deliberately controlling two facial expressions (smiles and frowns) by the emotional congruency with the expressions of adult and infant counterparts. In a Stroop-like task requiring participants' deliberate expressions of anger or happiness, we investigated the impact of task-irrelevant background pictures of adults and infants showing negative, neutral, or positive facial expressions. Participants' deliberate expressions were measured with electromyogram (EMG) of the M. zygomaticus major and M. corrugator supercilii. The latencies of EMG onsets revealed similar congruency effects for smiles and frowns with significant facilitation and inhibition components relative to the neutral condition. Interestingly, the facilitation effect for frown responses by negative facial expressions was significantly smaller vis a vis infant as compared to adult background faces. This diminished facilitation of frowns by infant's expressions of distress may relate to the activation of caregiver behavior or empathy. We investigated the neural correlates of the observed performance effects by recording event-related-potentials (ERPs). Increased amplitudes in ERP components were observed in incongruent relative to neutral conditions, revealing interference effects on both types of deliberate facial expressions, at different processing stages, namely, structural facial encoding (N170), conflict monitoring (N2), to semantic analysis (N400).
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Affiliation(s)
- Qiang Xu
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
| | - Werner Sommer
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
| | - Guillermo Recio
- Departament de Psicologia Clínica i Psicobiologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; Institut de Neurociències, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
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Chen NX, Wei P. Reward History Modulates the Processing of Task-Irrelevant Emotional Faces in a Demanding Task. Brain Sci 2023; 13:874. [PMID: 37371354 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13060874] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/30/2023] [Revised: 05/22/2023] [Accepted: 05/25/2023] [Indexed: 06/29/2023] Open
Abstract
The aim of the current study was to examine how reward-associated emotional facial distractors could capture attentional resources in a demanding visual task using event-related potentials (ERPs). In the learning phase, a high- or low-reward probability was paired with angry, happy, or neutral faces. Then, in the test phase, participants performed a face-irrelevant task with no reward at stake, in which they needed to discriminate the length of two lines presented in the center of the screen while faces that were taken from the learning phase were used as distractors presented in the periphery. The behavioral results revealed no effect of distractor emotional valence since the emotional information was task-irrelevant. The ERP results in the test phase revealed a significant main effect of distractor emotional valence for the parieto-occipital P200 (170-230 ms); the mean amplitudes in both the angry- and happy-face conditions were more positive than the neutral-face condition. Moreover, we found that the high-reward association enhanced both the N170 (140-180 ms) and EPN (260-330 ms) relative to the low-reward association condition. Finally, the N2pc (270-320 ms) also exhibited enhanced neural activity in the high-reward condition compared to the low-reward condition. The absence of emotional effects indicated that task-irrelevant emotional facial stimuli did not impact behavioral or neural responses in this highly demanding task. However, reward-associated information was processed when attention was directed elsewhere, suggesting that the processing of reward-associated information worked more in an automatic way, irrespective of the top-down task demand.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ning-Xuan Chen
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition and School of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China
| | - Ping Wei
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition and School of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China
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Vormbrock R, Bruchmann M, Menne L, Straube T, Schindler S. Testing stimulus exposure time as the critical factor of increased EPN and LPP amplitudes for fearful faces during perceptual distraction tasks. Cortex 2023; 160:9-23. [PMID: 36680924 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2022.12.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2022] [Revised: 12/18/2022] [Accepted: 12/20/2022] [Indexed: 12/31/2022]
Abstract
Fearful facial expressions are prioritized across different information processing stages, as evident in early, intermediate, and late components of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Recent studies showed that, in contrast to early N170 modulations, mid-latency (Early Posterior Negativity, EPN) and late (Late Positive Potential, LPP) emotional modulations depend on the attended perceptual feature. Nevertheless, several studies reported significant differences between emotional and neutral faces for the EPN or LPP components during distraction tasks. One cause for these conflicting findings might be that when faces are presented sufficiently long, participants attend to task-irrelevant features of the faces. In this registered report, we tested whether the presentation duration of faces is the critical factor for differences between reported emotional modulations during perceptual distraction tasks. To this end, 48 participants were required to discriminate the orientation of lines overlaid onto fearful or neutral faces, while face presentation varied (100 msec, 300 msec, 1,000 msec, 2,000 msec). While participants did not need to pay attention to the faces, we observed main effects of emotion for the EPN and LPP, but no interaction between emotion and presentation duration. Of note, unregistered exploratory tests per presentation duration showed no significant EPN and LPP emotion differences during short durations (100 and 300 msec) but significant differences with longer durations. While the presentation duration seems not to be a critical factor for EPN and LPP emotion effects, future studies are needed to investigate the role of threshold effects and the applied analytic designs to explain conflicting findings in the literature.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ria Vormbrock
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Maximilian Bruchmann
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Lucas Menne
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Sebastian Schindler
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany.
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Impact of face outline, parafoveal feature number and feature type on early face perception in a gaze-contingent paradigm: A mass-univariate re-analysis of ERP data. NEUROIMAGE: REPORTS 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ynirp.2022.100148] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/07/2022]
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12
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Schindler S, Richter TS, Bruchmann M, Busch NA, Straube T. Effects of task load, spatial attention, and trait anxiety on neuronal responses to fearful and neutral faces. Psychophysiology 2022; 59:e14114. [PMID: 35652518 DOI: 10.1111/psyp.14114] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2021] [Revised: 04/21/2022] [Accepted: 05/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
There is an ongoing debate on how different components of the event-related potential (ERP) to threat-related facial expressions are modulated by attentional conditions and interindividual differences in trait anxiety. In the current study (N = 80), we examined ERPs to centrally presented, task-irrelevant fearful and neutral faces, while participants had to solve a face-unrelated visual task, which differed in difficulty and spatial position. Critically, we used a fixation-controlled experimental design and ensured the spatial attention manipulation by spectral analysis of the EEG. Besides the factors emotion, spatial attention, and perceptual load, we also investigated correlations between trait anxiety and ERPs. While P1 emotion effects were insignificant, the N170 was increased to fearful faces regardless of load and spatial attention conditions. During the EPN time window, a significantly increased negativity for fearful faces was observed only during low load and spatial attention to the face. We found no significant relationship between ERPs and trait anxiety, questioning the hypothesis of a general hypersensitivity toward fearful expressions in anxious individuals. These results show a high resistance of the N170 amplitude increase for fearful faces to spatial attention and task load manipulations. By contrast, the EPN modulation by fearful faces index a resource-dependent stage of the ERP, requiring both spatial attention at the location of faces and low load of the face-irrelevant task.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian Schindler
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Münster, Germany.,Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Münster, Germany
| | - Theresa Sofie Richter
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Münster, Germany
| | - Maximilian Bruchmann
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Münster, Germany.,Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Münster, Germany
| | - Niko A Busch
- Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Münster, Germany.,Institute of Psychology, University of Muenster, Münster, Germany
| | - Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Münster, Germany.,Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Münster, Germany
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Schiano Lomoriello A, Sessa P, Doro M, Konvalinka I. Shared Attention Amplifies the Neural Processing of Emotional Faces. J Cogn Neurosci 2022; 34:917-932. [PMID: 35258571 DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01841] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Abstract
Sharing an experience, without communicating, affects people's subjective perception of the experience, often by intensifying it. We investigated the neural mechanisms underlying shared attention by implementing an EEG study where participants attended to and rated the intensity of emotional faces, simultaneously or independently. Participants performed the task in three experimental conditions: (a) alone; (b) simultaneously next to each other in pairs, without receiving feedback of the other's responses (shared without feedback); and (c) simultaneously while receiving the feedback (shared with feedback). We focused on two face-sensitive ERP components: The amplitude of the N170 was greater in the "shared with feedback" condition compared to the alone condition, reflecting a top-down effect of shared attention on the structural encoding of faces, whereas the EPN was greater in both shared context conditions compared to the alone condition, reflecting an enhanced attention allocation in the processing of emotional content of faces, modulated by the social context. Taken together, these results suggest that shared attention amplifies the neural processing of faces, regardless of the valence of facial expressions.
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Feature-based attention interacts with emotional picture content during mid-latency and late ERP processing stages. Biol Psychol 2022; 170:108310. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108310] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/21/2021] [Revised: 01/27/2022] [Accepted: 03/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
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