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Ziereis A, Schacht A. Additive effects of emotional expression and stimulus size on the perception of genuine and artificial facial expressions: an ERP study. Sci Rep 2024; 14:5574. [PMID: 38448642 PMCID: PMC10918072 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55678-2] [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: 08/31/2023] [Accepted: 02/26/2024] [Indexed: 03/08/2024] Open
Abstract
Seeing an angry individual in close physical proximity can not only result in a larger retinal representation of that individual and an enhanced resolution of emotional cues, but may also increase motivation for rapid visual processing and action preparation. The present study investigated the effects of stimulus size and emotional expression on the perception of happy, angry, non-expressive, and scrambled faces. We analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral responses of N = 40 participants who performed a naturalness classification task on real and artificially created facial expressions. While the emotion-related effects on accuracy for recognizing authentic expressions were modulated by stimulus size, ERPs showed only additive effects of stimulus size and emotional expression, with no significant interaction with size. This contrasts with previous research on emotional scenes and words. Effects of size were present in all included ERPs, whereas emotional expressions affected the N170, EPN, and LPC, irrespective of size. These results imply that the decoding of emotional valence in faces can occur even for small stimuli. Supra-additive effects in faces may necessitate larger size ranges or dynamic stimuli that increase arousal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Annika Ziereis
- Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior, Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology Laboratory, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, 37073, Göttingen, Germany.
| | - Anne Schacht
- Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior, Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology Laboratory, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, 37073, Göttingen, Germany
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Yu Z, Moses E, Kritikos A, Pegna AJ. Looming Angry Faces: Preliminary Evidence of Differential Electrophysiological Dynamics for Filtered Stimuli via Low and High Spatial Frequencies. Brain Sci 2024; 14:98. [PMID: 38275518 PMCID: PMC10813450 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci14010098] [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: 10/23/2023] [Revised: 01/15/2024] [Accepted: 01/17/2024] [Indexed: 01/27/2024] Open
Abstract
Looming motion interacts with threatening emotional cues in the initial stages of visual processing. However, the underlying neural networks are unclear. The current study investigated if the interactive effect of threat elicited by angry and looming faces is favoured by rapid, magnocellular neural pathways and if exogenous or endogenous attention influences such processing. Here, EEG/ERP techniques were used to explore the early ERP responses to moving emotional faces filtered for high spatial frequencies (HSF) and low spatial frequencies (LSF). Experiment 1 applied a passive-viewing paradigm, presenting filtered angry and neutral faces in static, approaching, or receding motions on a depth-cued background. In the second experiment, broadband faces (BSF) were included, and endogenous attention was directed to the expression of faces. Our main results showed that regardless of attentional control, P1 was enhanced by BSF angry faces, but neither HSF nor LSF faces drove the effect of facial expressions. Such findings indicate that looming motion and threatening expressions are integrated rapidly at the P1 level but that this processing relies neither on LSF nor on HSF information in isolation. The N170 was enhanced for BSF angry faces regardless of attention but was enhanced for LSF angry faces during passive viewing. These results suggest the involvement of a neural pathway reliant on LSF information at the N170 level. Taken together with previous reports from the literature, this may indicate the involvement of multiple parallel neural pathways during early visual processing of approaching emotional faces.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | - Alan J. Pegna
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia; (Z.Y.); (E.M.); (A.K.)
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Fernández-Folgueiras U, Hernández-Lorca M, Méndez-Bértolo C, Álvarez F, Giménez-Fernández T, Carretié L. Exogenous Attention to Emotional Stimuli Presenting Realistic (3D) Looming Motion. Brain Topogr 2022; 35:599-612. [PMID: 35933532 DOI: 10.1007/s10548-022-00909-w] [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: 11/19/2021] [Accepted: 07/19/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Previous research shows that dynamic stimuli, on the one hand, and emotional stimuli, on the other, capture exogenous attention due to their biological relevance. Through neural (ERPs) and behavioral measures (reaction times and errors), the present study explored the combined effect of looming motion and emotional content on attentional capture. To this end, 3D-recreated static and dynamic animals assessed as emotional (positive or negative) or neutral were presented as distractors while 71 volunteers performed a line orientation task. We observed a two-phase effect: firstly (before 300 ms), early components of ERPs (P1p and N2po) showed enhanced exogenous attentional capture by looming positive distractors and static threatening animals. Thereafter, dynamic and static threatening distractors received enhanced endogenous attention as revealed by both late ERP activity (LPC) and behavioral (errors) responses. These effects are likely explained by both the emotional valence and the distance of the stimulus at each moment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Uxía Fernández-Folgueiras
- Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Calle Ivan Pavlov 6, 28049, Madrid, Spain.
| | - María Hernández-Lorca
- Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Calle Ivan Pavlov 6, 28049, Madrid, Spain
| | - Constantino Méndez-Bértolo
- Departamento de Psicología. Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Cádiz, Calle de la República Saharaui 12, 11519, Cádiz, Spain.,Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Cádiz (INIBICA), Avenida Ana de Viya 21, 11009, Cádiz, Spain
| | - Fátima Álvarez
- Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Calle Ivan Pavlov 6, 28049, Madrid, Spain
| | - Tamara Giménez-Fernández
- Departamento de Psicología Básica, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Calle Ivan Pavlov 6, 28049, Madrid, Spain
| | - Luis Carretié
- Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Calle Ivan Pavlov 6, 28049, Madrid, Spain
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Yu Z, Kritikos A, Pegna AJ. Enhanced early ERP responses to looming angry faces. Biol Psychol 2022; 170:108308. [PMID: 35271956 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108308] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2021] [Revised: 03/01/2022] [Accepted: 03/04/2022] [Indexed: 11/02/2022]
Abstract
Although the brain is known to process threatening emotional stimuli and looming motion rapidly, little is known about how the emotion and motion interact. To address this question, two experiments were carried out which presented angry and neutral emotional faces on a depth-cued background that induced the perception of distance, or a non-cued background. Furthermore, faces either expanded or contracted in size such that they appeared to approach or recede from the viewer. EEG/ERP measures were used to identify the time course of brain activity for these looming and receding, angry and neutral emotional faces. The results of both experiments revealed that the P1 was enhanced by looming angry faces on the depth-cued background, compared to neutral approaching faces, as well as all receding faces, indicating an early interaction of emotion and motion within 100 ms of presentation. Angry expressions were also found to enhance the N170 regardless of movement. These findings suggest that processing of threat and looming motion interact at the very early stages of visual processing. Furthermore, as the modulating effect of looming motion on angry expressions only arose on the depth-cued background, the findings highlight the importance of approaching movements rather than sole increases in the retinal size of the stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhou Yu
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4068, Australia
| | - Ada Kritikos
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4068, Australia
| | - Alan J Pegna
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4068, Australia.
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