Why are you looking like that? How the context influences evaluation and processing of human faces

Morality or competence is more important? The effect of evaluation dimensions on ERP responses to neutral faces depends on contextual valence and self-relevance

Recent studies have shown that the processing of neutral facial expressions could be modulated by the valence and self-relevance of preceding verbal evaluations. However, these studies have not distinguished the dimension (i.e., morality and competence) from verbal evaluations. In fact, there is a hot controversy about whether morality or competence receives more weight. Therefore, using the ERP technique, the current study aimed to address this issue by comparing the influence of morality and competence evaluations on behavioral and neural responses to neutral facial expressions when these evaluations varied with contextual valence and self-relevance. Our ERP results revealed that the early EPN amplitudes were larger for neutral faces after receiving evaluations about self relative to evaluations about senders. Moreover, the EPN was more negative after a competence evaluation relative to a morality evaluation when these evaluations were positive, while this effect was absent when these evaluations were negative. The late LPP was larger after a morality evaluation compared to a competence evaluation when these evaluations were negative and directed to self. However, no significant LPP effect between morality and competence evaluations was observed when these evaluations were positive. The present study extended previous studies by showing that early and late processing stages of faces are affected by the evaluation dimension in a top-down manner and further modulated by contextual valence and self-relevance.

Event-related alpha power in early stage of facial expression processing in social anxiety: Influence of language context

Accurate interpretation of the emotional information conveyed by others' facial expressions is crucial for social interactions. Event-related alpha power, measured by time-frequency analysis, is a frequently used EEG index of emotional information processing. However, it is still unclear how event-related alpha power varies in emotional information processing in social anxiety groups. In the present study, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants from the social anxiety and healthy control groups viewed facial expressions (angry, happy, neutral) preceded by contextual sentences conveying either a positive or negative evaluation of the subject. The impact of context on facial expression processing in both groups of participants was explored by assessing behavioral ratings and event-related alpha power (0-200 ms after expression presentation). In comparison to the healthy control group, the social anxiety group exhibited significantly lower occipital alpha power in response to angry facial expressions in negative contexts and neutral facial expressions in positive contexts. The influence of language context on facial expression processing in individuals with social anxiety may occur at an early stage of processing.

Gender congruence and emotion effects in cross-modal associative learning: Insights from ERPs and pupillary responses

Social and emotional cues from faces and voices are highly relevant and have been reliably demonstrated to attract attention involuntarily. However, there are mixed findings as to which degree associating emotional valence to faces occurs automatically. In the present study, we tested whether inherently neutral faces gain additional relevance by being conditioned with either positive, negative, or neutral vocal affect bursts. During learning, participants performed a gender-matching task on face-voice pairs without explicit emotion judgments of the voices. In the test session on a subsequent day, only the previously associated faces were presented and had to be categorized regarding gender. We analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs), pupil diameter, and response times (RTs) of N = 32 subjects. Emotion effects were found in auditory ERPs and RTs during the learning session, suggesting that task-irrelevant emotion was automatically processed. However, ERPs time-locked to the conditioned faces were mainly modulated by the task-relevant information, that is, the gender congruence of the face and voice, but not by emotion. Importantly, these ERP and RT effects of learned congruence were not limited to learning but extended to the test session, that is, after removing the auditory stimuli. These findings indicate successful associative learning in our paradigm, but it did not extend to the task-irrelevant dimension of emotional relevance. Therefore, cross-modal associations of emotional relevance may not be completely automatic, even though the emotion was processed in the voice.

The power of (surreptitiously) mentioning your mentor's name: Subliminal priming of mentor's name modulates N170 responses to blurred faces

Using the event-related potentials (ERPs) technique and subliminal priming paradigm, the present study examined the influence of mentioning a mentor's name on graduate students. Fifty-eight graduate students were subliminally primed by mentor and stranger names before making pressure judgments of a series of unrelated blurred facial photos with neutral emotion. The face-sensitive N170 components were analyzed according to the pressure judgment × name prime conditions. The results showed that relative to stranger names, subliminal priming of mentor's name could modulate students' N170 reactions during facial processing. Specifically, the mentor-name priming attenuated N170 amplitudes for high-pressure judgment trials on the right hemisphere but heightened the overall N170 responses on the left hemisphere. Behavioral results also showed that the mentor-name priming slowed students' reaction time during pressure judgments; in addition, students' attitudes towards mentors were correlated with N170 amplitudes on high-pressure judgment conditions. These findings provided neuroscientific evidence demonstrating the psychological significance of mentors to graduate students. Theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.

Facial affect recognition in context in adults with and without TBI

Introduction

Several studies have reported impaired emotion recognition in adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI), but studies have two major design features that limit application of results to real-world contexts: (1) participants choose from among lists of basic emotions, rather than generating emotion labels, and (2) images are typically presented in isolation rather than in context. To address these limitations, we created an open-labeling task with faces shown alone or in real-life scenes, to more closely approximate how adults with TBI label facial emotions beyond the lab.

Methods

Participants were 55 adults (29 female) with moderate to severe TBI and 55 uninjured comparison peers, individually matched for race, sex, and age. Participants viewed 60 photographs of faces, either alone or in the pictured person's real-life context, and were asked what that person was feeling. We calculated the percent of responses that were standard forced-choice-task options, and also used sentiment intensity analysis to compare verbal responses between the two groups. We tracked eye movements for a subset of participants, to explore whether gaze duration or number of fixations helped explain any group differences in labels.

Results

Over 50% of responses in both groups were words other than basic emotions on standard affect tasks, highlighting the importance of eliciting open-ended responses. Valence of labels by participants with TBI was attenuated relative to valence of Comparison group labels, i.e., TBI group responses were less positive to positive images and the same was true for negative images, although the TBI group responses had higher lexical diversity. There were no significant differences in gaze duration or number of fixations between groups.

Discussion

Results revealed qualitative differences in affect labels between adults with and without TBI that would not have emerged on standard forced-choice tasks. Verbal differences did not appear to be attributable to differences in gaze patterns, leaving open the question of mechanisms of atypical affect processing in adults with TBI.

Towards a multilevel model of major depression: genes, immuno-metabolic function, and cortico-striatal signaling

Biological assay and imaging techniques have made visible a great deal of the machinery of mental illness. Over fifty years of investigation of mood disorders using these technologies has identified several biological regularities in these disorders. Here we present a narrative connecting genetic, cytokine, neurotransmitter, and neural-systems-level findings in major depressive disorder (MDD). Specifically, we connect recent genome-wide findings in MDD to metabolic and immunological disturbance in this disorder and then detail links between immunological abnormalities and dopaminergic signaling within cortico-striatal circuitry. Following this, we discuss implications of reduced dopaminergic tone for cortico-striatal signal conduction in MDD. Finally, we specify some of the flaws in the current model and propose ways forward for advancing multilevel formulations of MDD most efficiently.

Influence of advisees' facial feedback on subsequent advice-giving by advisors: Evidence from the behavioral and neurophysiological approach

Previous work has demonstrated the interpersonal implications of advisees' decisions (acceptance or rejection) on advisors' advice-giving behavior in subsequent exchanges. Here, using an ERP technique, we investigated how advisees' facial feedback (smiling, neutral, or frowning) accompanying their decisions (acceptance or rejection) influenced advisors' feedback evaluation from advisees and their advice-giving in subsequent exchanges. Behaviorally, regardless of whether the advice was accepted or rejected, advisors who received smiling-expression feedback would show higher willingness rates in subsequent advice-giving decisions, while advisors who received frowning-expression feedback would show lower willingness rates. On the neural level, in the feedback evaluation stage, the FRN and P3 responses were not sensitive to facial feedback. In contrast, frowning-expression feedback elicited a larger LPC amplitude than neutral- and smiling-expression feedback, regardless of whether the advice was accepted or rejected. In the advice decision stage, advisors who received neutral-expression feedback showed a larger N2 in making decisions than advisors who received frowning-expression feedback only after the advice was rejected. Additionally, Advisors who received smiling- and neutral-expression feedback showed a larger P3 in making decisions than advisors who received frowning-expression feedback only after the advice was accepted. In sum, the current findings extended previous research findings by showing that the effect of advisees' facial expressions on the advisors' advice-giving existed in multiple stages, including both the feedback evaluation stage and the advice decision stage.

Validation of Affective Sentences: Extending Beyond Basic Emotion Categories

We use nonverbal and verbal emotion cues to determine how others are feeling. Most studies in vocal emotion perception do not consider the influence of verbal content, using sentences with nonsense words or words that carry no emotional meaning. These online studies aimed to validate 95 sentences with verbal content intended to convey 10 emotions. Participants were asked to select the emotion that best described the emotional meaning of the sentence. Study 1 included 436 participants and Study 2 included 193. The Simpson diversity index was applied as a measure of dispersion of responses. Across the two studies, 38 sentences were labelled as representing 10 emotion categories with a low degree of diversity in participant responses. Expanding current databases beyond basic emotion categories is important for researchers exploring the interaction between tone of voice and verbal content, and/or people's capacity to make subtle distinctions between their own and others' emotions.

Diminished ability to integrate target stimuli with context during emotional recognition in individuals with broad autism phenotype

Individuals with broad autism phenotype (BAP) have a tendency not to integrate emotional stimuli with the surrounding context. They have also shown different patterns and abilities in processing positive and negative emotions. This study aimed to examine whether the effect of context on target stimuli could vary depending on the type of target emotion in individuals with BAP. Based on the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ) and Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), 36 individuals with BAP and 33 healthy controls were selected. All the participants performed an overlap-emotional task consisting of six conditions: 2 (congruence: congruent and incongruent) × 3 (emotion: fearful, sad, and happy). Reaction time and accuracy were measured as dependent variables. The results revealed that the individuals with BAP showed no difference in reaction time between the condition of congruence and incongruence, but that the control group was faster to categorize facial expression on the condition of congruence than that of incongruence regardless of the type of target emotion. There were no differences between the two groups in any of the conditions with regard to accuracy. These findings indicate that individuals with BAP tend not to integrate target emotions with contextual information, a feature that could worsen the speed of emotional recognition in individuals with BAP. This study confirmed that the individuals with BAP have different cognition patterns in emotional recognition than the control group.

Influence of affective verbal context on emotional facial expression perception of social anxiety

Previous studies have shown that the perception of ambiguous facial expressions for individuals with social anxiety was influenced by the affective verbal context. However, it is still unknown how emotional facial expressions are perceived by individuals with social anxiety in the context of the verbal context. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) technology to examine how individuals with social anxiety perceive emotional facial expressions in positive and negative contexts. The results showed that: (1) Within the negative verbal contexts, the amplitude of P1 induced by facial expressions in the social anxiety group was significantly higher than that induced by the healthy control group; The N170 amplitude induced by facial expressions in social anxiety group was less negative than that in the healthy control group, and was not affected by the context. (2) The social anxiety group had significantly higher LPP in negative contexts elicited by angry expressions than by happy expressions. This study proved that the perception of emotional facial expressions was influenced by top-down information in the early and late stages of visual perception for individuals with social anxiety.

Neural signatures of individual variability in context-dependent perception of ambiguous facial expression

How do we incorporate contextual information to infer others' emotional state? Here we employed a naturalistic context-dependent facial expression estimation task where participants estimated pleasantness levels of others' ambiguous expression faces when sniffing different contextual cues (e.g., urine, fish, water, and rose). Based on their pleasantness rating data, we placed participants on a context-dependency continuum and mapped the individual variability in the context-dependency onto the neural representation using a representational similarity analysis. We found that the individual variability in the context-dependency of facial expression estimation correlated with the activity level of the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) and the amygdala and was also decoded by the neural representation of the ventral anterior insula (vAI). A dynamic causal modeling revealed that those with higher context-dependency exhibited a greater degree of the modulation from vAI to the pgACC. These findings provide novel insights into the neural circuitry associated with the individual variability in context-dependent facial expression estimation and the first empirical evidence for individual variability in the predictive accounts of affective states.

Early Influence of Emotional Scenes on the Encoding of Fearful Expressions With Different Intensities: An Event-Related Potential Study

Contextual affective information influences the processing of facial expressions at the relatively early stages of face processing, but the effect of the context on the processing of facial expressions with varying intensities remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the influence of emotional scenes (fearful, happy, and neutral) on the processing of fear expressions at different levels of intensity (high, medium, and low) during the early stages of facial recognition using event-related potential (ERP) technology. EEG data were collected while participants performed a fearful facial expression recognition task. The results showed that (1) the recognition of high-intensity fear expression was higher than that of medium- and low-intensity fear expressions. Facial expression recognition was the highest when faces appeared in fearful scenes. (2) Emotional scenes modulated the amplitudes of N170 for fear expressions with different intensities. Specifically, the N170 amplitude, induced by high-intensity fear expressions, was significantly higher than that induced by low-intensity fear expressions when faces appeared in both neutral and fearful scenes. No significant differences were found between the N170 amplitudes induced by high-, medium-, and low-intensity fear expressions when faces appeared in happy scenes. These results suggest that individuals may tend to allocate their attention resources to the processing of face information when the valence between emotional context and expression conflicts i.e., when the conflict is absent (fear scene and fearful faces) or is low (neutral scene and fearful faces).

Long-Term Influence of Incidental Emotions on the Emotional Judgment of Neutral Faces

Background: Evidence indicates that the processing of facial stimuli may be influenced by incidental factors, and these influences are particularly powerful when facial expressions are ambiguous, such as neutral faces. However, limited research investigated whether emotional contextual information presented in a preceding and unrelated experiment could be pervasively carried over to another experiment to modulate neutral face processing.

Objective: The present study aims to investigate whether an emotional text presented in a first experiment could generate negative emotion toward neutral faces in a second experiment unrelated to the previous experiment.

Methods: Ninety-nine students (all women) were randomly assigned to read and evaluate a negative text (negative context) or a neutral text (neutral text) in the first experiment. In the subsequent second experiment, the participants performed the following two tasks: (1) an attentional task in which neutral faces were presented as distractors and (2) a task involving the emotional judgment of neutral faces.

Results: The results show that compared to the neutral context, in the negative context, the participants rated more faces as negative. No significant result was found in the attentional task.

Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that incidental emotional information available in a previous experiment can increase participants’ propensity to interpret neutral faces as more negative when emotional information is directly evaluated. Therefore, the present study adds important evidence to the literature suggesting that our behavior and actions are modulated by previous information in an incidental or low perceived way similar to what occurs in everyday life, thereby modulating our judgments and emotions.

Socially induced negative affective knowledge modulates early face perception but not gaze cueing of attention

Prior affective and social knowledge about other individuals has been shown to modulate perception of their faces and gaze‐related attentional processes. However, it remains unclear whether emotionally charged knowledge acquired through interactive social learning also modulates face processing and attentional control. Thus, the aim of this study was to test whether affective knowledge induced through social interactions in a naturalistic exchange game can influence early stages of face processing and attentional shifts in a subsequent gaze‐cueing task. As indicated by self‐reported ratings, the game was successful in inducing valenced affective knowledge towards positive and negative players. In the subsequent task, in which the locations of future targets were cued by the gaze of the game players, we observed enhanced early neural activity (larger amplitude of the P1 component) in response to a photograph of the negative player. This indicates that negative affective knowledge about an individual indeed modulates very early stages of the processing of this individual's face. Our study contributes to the existing literature by providing further evidence for the saliency of interactive social exchange paradigms that are used to induce affective knowledge. Moreover, it extends the previous research by presenting a very early modulation of perception by socially learned affective knowledge. Importantly, it also offers increased ecological validity of the findings due to the use of naturalistic social exchange in the study design.

This research complements previous evidence that experimentally induced socio‐affective knowledge about other individuals, modulates processing of their faces, and shows that negative (but not positive) affect enhances very early face processing (the P1). Importantly, we provide an effective affect induction tool—an interactive social exchange game—which offers increased social ecological validity in experimental settings.

Meaningful faces: Self-relevance of semantic context in an initial social encounter improves later face recognition

Self-relevant stimuli (i.e. meaningful/important to the observer and related to the self) are typically remembered better than other-relevant stimuli. However, whether a self-relevance memory benefit could be conferred to a novel neutral face, remains to be seen. Recent studies have shown that emotional responses to neutral faces can be altered by using a preceding sentence as context that varies in terms of self-relevance (self/other-relevant) and valence (positive/negative; e.g. "S/he thinks your comment is dumb/smart"). We adapted this paradigm to investigate whether the context conferred by the preceding sentence also impacts memorability of the subsequently presented face. Participants saw faces primed with contextual sentences and rated how aroused, and how positive or negative, the faces made them feel. Later incidental recognition accuracy for the faces was greater when these had been preceded by self-relevant compared to other-relevant sentences. Faces preceded by self-relevant contexts were also rated as more arousing. There was no impact of sentence valence on arousal ratings or on recognition memory for faces. Sentence self-relevance and valence interacted to affect participants' ratings of how positive or negative the faces made them feel during encoding, but did not interact to impact later recognition. Our results indicate that initial social encounters can have a lasting effect on one's memory of another person, producing an enhanced memory trace of that individual. We propose that the effect is driven by an arousal-based mechanism, elicited by faces perceived to be self-relevant.

Brain Activation in Contrasts of Microexpression Following Emotional Contexts

The recognition of microexpressions may be influenced by emotional contexts. The microexpression is recognized poorly when it follows a negative context in contrast to a neutral context. Based on the behavioral evidence, we predicted that the effect of emotional contexts might be dependent on neural activities. Using the synthesized microexpressions task modified from the Micro-Expression Training Tool (METT), we performed an functional MRI (fMRI) study to compare brain response in contrasts of the same targets following different contexts. Behaviorally, we observed that the accuracies of target microexpressions following neutral contexts were significantly higher than those following negative or positive contexts. At the neural level, we found increased brain activations in contrasts of the same targets following different contexts, which reflected the discrepancy in the processing of emotional contexts. The increased activations implied that different emotional contexts might differently influence the processing of subsequent target microexpressions and further suggested interactions between the processing of emotional contexts and of microexpressions.

Are you as important as me? Self-other discrimination within trait-adjective processing

Healthy adults typically display enhanced processing for self- (relative to other-) relevant and positive (relative to negative) information. However, it is unclear whether these two biases interact to form a self-positivity bias, whereby self-positive information receives prioritized processing. It is also unclear how a blocked versus mixed referent design impacts reference and valence processing. We addressed these questions using behavioral and electrophysiological indices across two studies using a Self-Referential Encoding Task, followed by surprise recall and recognition tasks. Early (P1) and late (LPP) event-related potentials were time-locked to a series of trait adjectives, encoded relative to oneself or a fictional character, with referent presented in a blocked (Exp. 1) or mixed (Exp. 2) trial design. Regardless of study design, participants recalled and recognized more self- than other-relevant adjectives, and recognized more positive than negative adjectives. Additionally, participants demonstrated larger LPP amplitudes for self-relevant and positive adjectives. The LPP self-relevance effect emerged earlier and persisted longer in the blocked (400-800 ms) versus mixed design (600-800 ms). The LPP valence effect was not apparent in the blocked design, but appeared late in the mixed design (600-1200 ms). Critically, the interaction between self-relevance and valence appeared only behaviorally in the mixed design, suggesting that overall self-relevance and valence independently impact neural socio-cognitive processing.

Contextual knowledge provided by a movie biases implicit perception of the protagonist

We are constantly categorizing other people as belonging to our in-group (‘one of us’) or out-group (‘one of them’). Such grouping occurs fast and automatically and can be based on others’ visible characteristics such as skin color or clothing style. Here we studied neural underpinnings of implicit social grouping not often visible on the face, male sexual orientation. A total of 14 homosexuals and 15 heterosexual males were scanned in functional magnetic resonance imaging while watching a movie about a homosexual man, whose face was also presented subliminally before (subjects did not know about the character’s sexual orientation) and after the movie. We discovered significantly stronger activation to the man’s face after seeing the movie in homosexual but not heterosexual subjects in medial prefrontal cortex, frontal pole, anterior cingulate cortex, right temporal parietal junction and bilateral superior frontal gyrus. In previous research, these brain areas have been connected to social perception, self-referential thinking, empathy, theory of mind and in-group perception. In line with previous studies showing biased perception of in-/out-group faces to be context dependent, our novel approach further demonstrates how complex contextual knowledge gained under naturalistic viewing can bias implicit social perception.

The effects of suppressing the biological stress systems on social threat-assessment following acute stress

RATIONALE

Stress is associated with increased sensitivity to threat. Previous investigations examining how stress affects threat processing have largely focused on biomarker responses associated with either the sympathetic-nervous-system (SNS) or the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

OBJECTIVES

We pharmacologically suppressed activations of SNS, HPA, or both, prior to stress and investigated how each stress system modulates social threat assessment.

METHODS

One hundred sixty-one healthy men and women were randomized in a between-subject design, to one of four pharmacological or placebo conditions: dexamethasone-placebo, placebo-propranolol, dexamethasone-propranolol, or placebo-placebo. Participants provided threat assessments for angry and neutral human faces on a baseline day, and immediately after stress induction on a testing day.

RESULTS

With both systems responding normally to stress (placebo-placebo), threat assessment was higher for neutral faces compared with angry. Compared with placebo, SNS suppression resulted in increased threat assessment for angry faces. HPA suppression resulted in decreased threat assessment for neutral and angry faces. When both systems were suppressed, there was an increase in threat assessment for angry faces, and no difference from placebo for neutral.

CONCLUSION

Our findings demonstrated that when intact, the biological stress systems adaptively support organisms during stress by focusing attention towards specific stimuli that are relevant to the threat. Dysregulations of the stress systems result in important system specific consequences on threat evaluation, such that suppression of either stress system alone resulted in reduced threat assessment for contextually relevant threatening stimuli, whereas when both systems were suppressed, individuals appear indiscriminately attentive to all potential threats in the environment, resulting in increased threat processing of both contextually relevant and irrelevant stimuli. Given that stress-related psychopathologies have been associated with dysregulations of the stress systems and biased responses to social threat, a systematic understanding of the mechanisms that underlie how stress systems modulate social threat assessment is needed, and can provide important insights into the cognitive processes that are involved in the development and maintenance of stress-related psychopathologies.

Causal Information Over Facial Expression: Modulation of Facial Expression Processing by Congruency and Causal Factor of the Linguistic Cues in 5-Year-Old Japanese Children

It is unknown whether linguistic cues influence preschoolers' recognition of facial expression when the emotion of the face is incongruent with the linguistic cues and what type of linguistic cue is influential in the modulation of facial expression. In a priming task, we presented 5-year-old children three types of linguistic information conveying happy or sad emotion (simple label, label with rich causal explanation of emotion, and label with poor causal explanation of emotion) prior to the presentation of a happy or a sad face. We asked participants to recognize emotion of facial expression and examined whether they follow linguistic information than the facial expression when the emotions of linguistic information and face were incongruent. As a result, children who were presented the label with rich causal explanation judged emotion of face according to the linguistic information, whereas children who were presented the simple label or the label with poor causal explanation followed the emotions of facial expression. This result indicated that children's autonomic reliance on situational cues depends on the emotional causality and the concreteness of emotional state conveyed by the linguistic cues. This finding contributes to our understanding of the face inferiority effect on children's developing notion of emotions.

Criticism in a foreign language hurts less

Understanding emotional resonances to social evaluations delivered in different languages may contribute to favourable social communication in today's increasingly internationalised world. The present study thus investigated the language-induced emotionality differences by presenting Chinese-English bilinguals with self-referential praising and criticising statements in both their native Chinese and foreign English languages and asking them to make their affective and cognitive judgments on the comments, namely, to rate how pleased they were by the comments and how truly the comments described their attributes. Results revealed that while criticism was rated more unpleasant than praise in both languages, the unpleasantness was reduced by the use of English as compared to Chinese. Intriguingly, no cross-language differences were found in the cognitive assessment. Our findings may shed light on facilitating affective social communication using different languages.

Cortical structure abnormalities in females with conduct disorder prior to age 15

Among females, conduct disorder (CD) before age 15 is associated with multiple adverse outcomes in adulthood. The few existing structural neuroimaging studies of females with CD report abnormalities of gray matter volumes. The present study compared cortical thickness and surface area of young women with childhood/adolescent CD and healthy women to determine whether cortical abnormalities were present in adulthood and whether they were related to prior CD. Structural brain images from 31 women with CD and 25 healthy women were analyzed using FreeSurfer. Group differences between cortical thickness and surface area were assessed using cluster-wise corrections with Monte Carlo simulations. Women with prior CD, relative to healthy women, showed: (1) reduced cortical thickness in left fusiform gyrus extending up to entorhinal cortex and lingual gyrus; (2) reduced surface area in right superior parietal cortex; (3) increased surface area in left superior temporal gyrus, and right precentral gyrus. These differences remained significant after adjusting for past comorbid disorders, current symptoms of anxiety and depression, current substance use as well as maltreatment. The study suggests that among females, CD prior to age 15 is associated with cortical structure abnormalities in brain regions involved in emotion processing and social interaction.

The language context effect in facial expressions processing and its mandatory characteristic

Background visual scenes in which faces are perceived provide contextual information for facial expression processing. One type of background information, the language context, has a vital influence on facial expression processing. The current study is aimed to investigate the effect of the language context on facial expression processing by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). Experiment one adopted the facial expression categorization task to investigate the effects of different language contexts on emotional and non-emotional facial processing. Experiment two adopted the task-irrelevant paradigm to investigate whether the language context effect on facial expression processing was mandatory. The results found that (1) the language context affected facial expression processing. Facial expression processing was promoted when the language context was emotionally congruent with faces. Moreover, the language context had an evoking effect on neutral faces. To be detailed, neutral facial expressions were evoked to be judged as positive in the positive language context while as negative in the negative language context. (2) The language context effect still affected facial expression processing in a task-irrelevant paradigm. When the language context was emotionally incongruent with facial expressions, larger N170 and LPP amplitudes were elicited, indicating the inhibition of incongruent emotions. These findings prove that the language context effect on facial expression processing is mandatory.

Men Scare Me More: Gender Differences in Social Fear Conditioning in Virtual Reality

Women nearly twice as often develop social anxiety disorder (SAD) compared to men. The reason for this difference is still being debated. The present study investigates gender differences and the effect of male versus female agents in low (LSA) and high socially anxious (HSA) participants regarding the acquisition and extinction of social fear in virtual reality (VR). In a social fear conditioning (SFC) paradigm, 60 participants actively approached several agents, some of which were paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) consisting of a verbal rejection and spitting simulated by an aversive air blast (CS+), or without an US (CS-). Primary outcome variables were defined for each of the 4 levels of emotional reactions including experience (fear ratings), psychophysiology (fear-potentiated startle), behavior (avoidance), and cognition (recognition task). Secondary outcome variables were personality traits, contingency ratings, heart rate (HR), and skin conductance response (SCR). As hypothesized, fear ratings for CS+ increased significantly during acquisition and the differentiation between CS+ and CS- vanished during extinction. Additionally, women reported higher fear compared to men. Furthermore, a clear difference in the fear-potentiated startle response between male CS+ and CS- at the end of acquisition indicates successful SFC to male agents in both groups. Concerning behavior, results exhibited successful SFC in both groups and a general larger distance to agents in HSA than LSA participants. Furthermore, HSA women maintained a larger distance to male compared to female agents. No such differences were found for HSA men. Regarding recognition, participants responded with higher sensitivity to agent than object stimuli, suggesting a higher ability to distinguish the target from the distractor for social cues, which were on focus during SFC. Regarding the secondary physiological outcome variables, we detected an activation in HR response during acquisition, but there were no differences between stimuli or groups. Moreover, we observed a gender but no CS+/CS- differences in SCR. SFC was successfully induced and extinguished according to the primary outcome variables. VR is an interesting tool to measure emotional learning processes on different outcome levels with enhanced ecological validity. Future research should further investigate social fear learning mechanisms for developing more efficient treatments of SAD.

The effect of emotional and self-referential contexts on ERP responses towards surprised faces

The perception of surprised faces is demonstrably modulated by emotional context. However, the influence of self-relevance and its interaction with emotional context have not been explored. The present study investigated the effects of contextual valence and self-reference on the perception of surprised faces. Our results revealed that faces in a negative context elicited a larger N170 than those in a neutral context. The EPN was affected by the interaction between contextual valence and self-reference, with larger amplitudes for faces in self-related positive contexts and sender-related negative contexts. Additionally, LPP amplitudes were enhanced for faces in negative contexts relative to neutral and positive contexts, as well as for self-related contexts in comparison to sender-related contexts. Together, these findings help to elucidate the psychophysiological mechanisms underlying the effects of emotional and self-referential contexts on the perception of surprised faces, which are characterized by distinctive ERPs.

Encoding Praise and Criticism During Social Evaluation Alters Interactive Responses in the Mentalizing and Affective Learning Networks

Verbal communication with evaluative characters of different emotional valence has a considerable impact on the extent to which social relations are facilitated or undermined. Here using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated how the brain acts in response to social praise and criticism, leading to differential affective judgments. We engaged thirty men and women in a task associating sex-balanced, neutral faces with praising or criticizing comments targeting others or objects. A whole-brain analysis revealed that criticism as compared to praise enhanced the activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), particularly its dorsal portion, whereas the right amygdala displayed an opposite pattern of changes. Comments on others relative to objects increased the reactivity in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) such that both praise and criticism of others produced stronger activation in these two regions than their object-targeted counterparts. The interaction of valence and target was identified in the mPFC with greater reactivity in the contrasts of criticism vs. praise in the social context and others- vs. object-targeted criticism. Comments also modulated the functional connectivity of prior activated regions with the left temporoparietal junction, bilateral caudate and left PCC/precuneus showing reduced connectivity in response to social criticism but greatly strengthened connectivity for social praise as compared to non-social counterparts. These neural effects subsequently led to altered likeability ratings for the faces. Neither behavioral nor neural effects observed were influenced by the gender of participants. Taken together, our findings suggest a fundamental interactive role of the mentalizing and affective learning networks in differential encoding of individuals associated with praising or criticizing others, leading to learning of valenced traits and subsequent approach or avoidance responses in social interactions.

Reappraising faces: effects on accountability appraisals, self-reported valence, and pupil diameter

Many of our emotions arise in social contexts, as we interact with and learn about others. What is not yet clear, however, is how such emotions unfold when we either react to others or attempt to regulate our emotions. To address this issue, 30 healthy volunteers reacted to or reappraised positive or negative information that was paired with neutral faces. While they were doing this task, we assessed pupillary responses. We also asked participants to provide ratings of accountability and experienced emotion. Findings indicated that appraised accountability increased in response to emotional information, and changes in accountability were associated with commensurate changes in valence reports and increased pupil diameter. During reappraisal, accountability and emotion decreased, but pupil diameter increased. The findings highlight the importance of accountability appraisals during the generation and regulation of emotional reactions to others, while also documenting pupillary increases during emotional reactivity and regulation.

Affective theory of mind inferences contextually influence the recognition of emotional facial expressions

The recognition of emotional facial expressions is often subject to contextual influence, particularly when the face and the context convey similar emotions. We investigated whether spontaneous, incidental affective theory of mind inferences made while reading vignettes describing social situations would produce context effects on the identification of same-valenced emotions (Experiment 1) as well as differently-valenced emotions (Experiment 2) conveyed by subsequently presented faces. Crucially, we found an effect of context on reaction times in both experiments while, in line with previous work, we found evidence for a context effect on accuracy only in Experiment 1. This demonstrates that affective theory of mind inferences made at the pragmatic level of a text can automatically, contextually influence the perceptual processing of emotional facial expressions in a separate task even when those emotions are of a distinctive valence. Thus, our novel findings suggest that language acts as a contextual influence to the recognition of emotional facial expressions for both same and different valences.

Prefrontal Cortical Response to Negative Social Words Links Social Risk to Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence

Research suggests that altered emotion processing may be one important pathway linking social risk factors and depressive symptoms. We examined the extent to which neural response to negatively valenced social information might help to account for the relationship between social risk and depressive symptoms in youth. Forty-nine youth were scanned while identifying the emotional valence of words that connoted social status. They also completed questionnaires assessing self-reported social risk factors and depressive symptoms. Mediation analysis revealed that reduced dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity in response to negative social status words explained the positive association between social risk and depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that social risk factors present during adolescence may contribute to depressive symptoms by influencing the neural substrates of emotion processing.

Face-to-face: Perceived personal relevance amplifies face processing

The human face conveys emotional and social information, but it is not well understood how these two aspects influence face perception. In order to model a group situation, two faces displaying happy, neutral or angry expressions were presented. Importantly, faces were either facing the observer, or they were presented in profile view directed towards, or looking away from each other. In Experiment 1 (n = 64), face pairs were rated regarding perceived relevance, wish-to-interact, and displayed interactivity, as well as valence and arousal. All variables revealed main effects of facial expression (emotional > neutral), face orientation (facing observer > towards > away) and interactions showed that evaluation of emotional faces strongly varies with their orientation. Experiment 2 (n = 33) examined the temporal dynamics of perceptual-attentional processing of these face constellations with event-related potentials. Processing of emotional and neutral faces differed significantly in N170 amplitudes, early posterior negativity (EPN), and sustained positive potentials. Importantly, selective emotional face processing varied as a function of face orientation, indicating early emotion-specific (N170, EPN) and late threat-specific effects (LPP, sustained positivity). Taken together, perceived personal relevance to the observer-conveyed by facial expression and face direction-amplifies emotional face processing within triadic group situations.

Facial Expressions in Context: Electrophysiological Correlates of the Emotional Congruency of Facial Expressions and Background Scenes

Facial expressions can display personal emotions and indicate an individual’s intentions within a social situation. They are extremely important to the social interaction of individuals. Background scenes in which faces are perceived provide important contextual information for facial expression processing. The purpose of this study was to explore the time course of emotional congruency effects in processing faces and scenes simultaneously by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). The behavioral results found that the categorization of facial expression was faster and more accurate when the face was emotionally congruent than incongruent with the emotion displayed by the scene. In ERPs the late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes were modulated by the emotional congruency between faces and scenes. Specifically, happy faces elicited larger LPP amplitudes within positive than within negative scenes and fearful faces within negative scenes elicited larger LPP amplitudes than within positive scenes. The results did not find the scene effects on the P1 and N170 components. These findings indicate that emotional congruency effects could occur in late stages of facial expression processing, reflecting motivated attention allocation.

How Context Influences Our Perception of Emotional Faces: A Behavioral Study on the Kuleshov Effect

Facial expressions are of major importance in understanding the mental and emotional states of others. So far, most studies on the perception and comprehension of emotions have used isolated facial expressions as stimuli; for example, photographs of actors displaying facial expressions corresponding to one of the so called ‘basic emotions.’ However, our real experience during social interactions is different: facial expressions of emotion are mostly perceived in a wider context, constituted by body language, the surrounding environment, and our beliefs and expectations. Already in the early twentieth century, the Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov argued that such context, established by intermediate shots of strong emotional content, could significantly change our interpretation of facial expressions in film. Prior experiments have shown behavioral effects pointing in this direction, but have only used static images as stimuli. Our study used a more ecological design with participants watching film sequences of neutral faces, crosscut with scenes of strong emotional content (evoking happiness or fear, plus neutral stimuli as a baseline condition). The task was to rate the emotion displayed by a target person’s face in terms of valence, arousal, and category. Results clearly demonstrated the presence of a significant effect in terms of both valence and arousal in the fear condition only. Moreover, participants tended to categorize the target person’s neutral facial expression choosing the emotion category congruent with the preceding context. Our results highlight the context-sensitivity of emotions and the importance of studying them under ecologically valid conditions.

Posterior and prefrontal contributions to the development posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity: an fMRI study of symptom provocation in acute stress disorder

Acute stress disorder (ASD) is predictive of the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In response to symptom provocation, the exposure to trauma-related pictures, ASD patients showed increased activation of the medial posterior areas of precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex as well as of superior prefrontal cortex in a previous study. The current study aimed at investigating which activated areas are predictive of the development of PTSD. Nineteen ASD patients took part in an fMRI study in which they were shown personalized trauma-related and neutral pictures within 4 weeks of the traumatic event. They were assessed for severity of PTSD 4 weeks later. Activation contrasts between trauma-related and neutral pictures were correlated with subsequent PTSD symptom severity. Greater activation in, among others, right medial precuneus, left retrosplenial cortex, precentral and right superior temporal gyrus as well as less activation in lateral, superior prefrontal and left fusiform gyrus was related to subsequently increased PTSD severity. The results are broadly in line with neural areas related to etiological models of PTSD, namely multisensory associative learning recruiting posterior regions on the one hand and failure to reappraise maladaptive cognitions, thought to involve prefrontal areas, on the other.

The processing of body expressions during emotional scenes: the modulation role of attachment styles

There is broad evidence indicating that contextual information influence the processing of emotional stimuli. However, attachment theory suggests that attachment styles contribute to the ways in which people perceive emotional events. To shed light on whether the processing of body expressions during different emotional scenes is modulated by attachment styles, attachment-related electrophysiological differences were measured using event-related potentials. For avoidantly attached group, our results suggested that larger N170 amplitudes were educed by neutral bodies than angry bodies, which was found only in neutral scene. Moreover, significant differences were found in P300 amplitudes in response to angry bodies compared with neutral ones only during angry scene. However, securely and anxiously attached individuals were associated with larger P300 amplitudes in response to angry bodies versus neutral ones in both emotional scenes. The current study highlights the characteristics of cognitive processing of attachment styles on body expressions during different emotional scenes, with the variation of N170 and P300 amplitude in different emotional scenes as the best example.

Labelling Facial Affect in Context in Adults with and without TBI

Recognition of facial affect has been studied extensively in adults with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI), mostly by asking examinees to match basic emotion words to isolated faces. This method may not capture affect labelling in everyday life when faces are in context and choices are open-ended. To examine effects of context and response format, we asked 148 undergraduate students to label emotions shown on faces either in isolation or in natural visual scenes. Responses were categorised as representing basic emotions, social emotions, cognitive state terms, or appraisals. We used students' responses to create a scoring system that was applied prospectively to five men with TBI. In both groups, over 50% of responses were neither basic emotion words nor synonyms, and there was no significant difference in response types between faces alone vs. in scenes. Adults with TBI used labels not seen in students' responses, talked more overall, and often gave multiple labels for one photo. Results suggest benefits of moving beyond forced-choice tests of faces in isolation to fully characterise affect recognition in adults with and without TBI.

Altered executive control network resting-state connectivity in social anxiety disorder

OBJECTIVES

Research into the neural basis of social anxiety disorder (SAD) suggests alterations in prefrontal networks, which may in turn disrupt regulation of the limbic system. Better understanding of the disturbed interface between these networks may improve current pathogenic models of this disorder.

METHODS

Applying group independent component analysis (ICA) to recordings of fMRI resting-state, connectivity in the executive control network was studied in 18 patients with SAD and 15 age- and sex-matched healthy controls.

RESULTS

Results revealed a dissociation within the left executive control network, with SAD patients showing decreased connectivity of the orbitofrontal gyrus and increased connectivity of the middle frontal gyrus compared to healthy controls. In a subsequent seed-based functional connectivity analysis, patients with SAD displayed increased connectivity between the left orbitofrontal gyrus and the left amygdala.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that hypo-connectivity in the executive control network and hyper-connectivity between the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala may reflect a disturbance in the balance between top-down and bottom-up control processes, potentially contributing to the development of SAD.

Contextual Valence and Sociality Jointly Influence the Early and Later Stages of Neutral Face Processing

Recent studies have demonstrated that face perception is influenced by emotional contextual information. However, because facial expressions are routinely decoded and understood during social communication, sociality should also be considered-that is, it seems necessary to explore whether emotional contextual effects are influenced by the sociality of contextual information. Furthermore, although one behavioral study has explored the effects of context on selective attention to faces, the exact underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Therefore, the current study investigated how valence and sociality of contextual information influenced the early and later stages of neutral face processing. We first employed an established affective learning procedure, wherein neutral faces were paired with verbal information that differed in valence (negative, neutral) and sociality (social, non-social), to manipulate contextual information. Then, to explore the effects of context on face perception, participants performed a face perception task, while the N170, early posterior negativity (EPN), and late positive potential (LPP) components were measured. Finally, to explore the effects of context on selective attention, participants performed a dot probe task while the N2pc was recorded. The results showed that, in the face perception task, faces paired with negative social information elicited greater EPN and LPP than did faces paired with neutral social information; no differences existed between faces paired with negative and neutral non-social information. In the dot probe task, faces paired with negative social information elicited a more negative N2pc amplitude (indicating attentional bias) than did faces paired with neutral social information; the N2pc did not differ between faces paired with negative and neutral non-social information. Together, these results suggest that contextual information influenced both face perception and selective attention, and these context effects were governed by the interaction between valence and sociality of contextual information.

Am I seeing myself, my friend or a stranger? The role of personal familiarity in visual distinction of body identities in the human brain

Several brain regions appear to play a role in representing different body identities. The specific contribution of each of these regions is still unclear, however. Here we investigated which brain areas enable the visual distinction between self and other bodies of different familiarity, and between familiar and unfamiliar other individuals, and moreover, where identity-specific information on the three individuals was encoded. Participants were confronted with standardized headless human body stimuli either showing the participant's own, a personally familiar or an unfamiliar other body, while performing a luminance discrimination task. Employing multivariate pattern analysis, we were able to identify areas that allowed for the distinction of self from personal familiar other bodies within the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus. Successful distinction of self from unfamiliar others was possible in the left middle frontal gyrus, the right inferior frontal gyrus, the left pre-supplementary motor area and the right putamen. Personally familiar others could be distinguished from unfamiliar others in the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ). An analysis of identity-specific information revealed a spatial gradient ranging from inferior posterior to superior anterior portions of the mPFC that was associated with encoding identity-related information for self via familiar to unfamiliar other bodies, respectively. Furthermore, several midline and frontal regions encoded information on more than one identity. The TPJ's role in deviance detection was underlined, as only identity-specific information on unfamiliar others was encoded here. Together, our findings suggest substantial spatial overlap in neural correlates of self and other body representation and thus, support the hypothesis of a socially-related representation of the self.

Rethinking Explicit Expectations: Connecting Placebos, Social Cognition, and Contextual Perception

Expectancy effects are a widespread phenomenon, and they come with a lasting influence on cognitive operations, from basic stimulus processing to higher cognitive functions. Their impact is often profound and behaviorally significant, as evidenced by an enormous body of literature investigating the characteristics and possible processes underlying expectancy effects. The literature on this topic spans diverse fields, from clinical psychology to cognitive neuroscience, and from social psychology to behavioral biology. We present an emerging perspective on these diverse phenomena and show how this perspective stimulates new toeholds for investigation, provides insight in underlying mechanisms, improves awareness of methodological confounds, and can lead to a deeper understanding of the effects of expectations on a broad spectrum of cognitive processes.

Criticism hurts everybody, praise only some: Common and specific neural responses to approving and disapproving social-evaluative videos

Social evaluation is a ubiquitous feature of daily interpersonal interactions and can produce strong positive or negative emotional reactions. While previous research has highlighted neural correlates of static or dynamic facial expressions, little is known about neural processing of more naturalistic social interaction simulations or the modulating role of inter-individual differences such as trait fear of negative/positive evaluation. The present fMRI study investigated neural activity of 37 (21 female) healthy participants while watching videos of posers expressing a range of positive, negative, and neutral statements tapping into several basic and social emotions. Unpleasantness ratings linearly increased in response to positive to neutral to negative videos whereas arousal ratings were elevated in both emotional video conditions. At the whole brain level, medial prefrontal and rostral anterior cingulate cortex activated strongly in both emotional conditions which may be attributed to the cognitive processing demands of responding to complex social evaluation. Region of interest analysis for basic emotion processing areas revealed enhanced amygdala activation in both emotional conditions, whereas anterior and posterior insula showed stronger activity during negative evaluations only. Individuals with high fear of positive evaluation were characterized by increased posterior insula activity during positive videos, suggesting heightened interoception. Taken together, these results replicate and extend studies that used facial expression stimuli and reveal neurobiological systems involved in processing of more complex social-evaluative videos. Results also point to vulnerability factors for social-interaction related psychopathologies.

The Effect of Affective Context on Visuocortical Processing of Neutral Faces in Social Anxiety

It has been demonstrated that verbal context information alters the neural processing of ambiguous faces such as faces with no apparent facial expression. In social anxiety, neutral faces may be implicitly threatening for socially anxious individuals due to their ambiguous nature, but even more so if these neutral faces are put in self-referential negative contexts. Therefore, we measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to neutral faces which were preceded by affective verbal information (negative, neutral, positive). Participants with low social anxiety (LSA; n = 23) and high social anxiety (HSA; n = 21) were asked to watch and rate valence and arousal of the respective faces while continuous EEG was recorded. ERP analysis revealed that HSA showed elevated P100 amplitudes in response to faces, but reduced structural encoding of faces as indexed by reduced N170 amplitudes. In general, affective context led to an enhanced early posterior negativity (EPN) for negative compared to neutral facial expressions. Moreover, HSA compared to LSA showed enhanced late positive potentials (LPP) to negatively contextualized faces, whereas in LSA this effect was found for faces in positive contexts. Also, HSA rated faces in negative contexts as more negative compared to LSA. These results point at enhanced vigilance for neutral faces regardless of context in HSA, while structural encoding seems to be diminished (avoidance). Interestingly, later components of sustained processing (LPP) indicate that LSA show enhanced visuocortical processing for faces in positive contexts (happy bias), whereas this seems to be the case for negatively contextualized faces in HSA (threat bias). Finally, our results add further new evidence that top-down information in interaction with individual anxiety levels can influence early-stage aspects of visual perception.