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Assessment of acute pain in preterm infants by evaluation of facial expression and frequency domain analysis of heart rate variability.

In ten preterm infants (postconceptional age 27-35 weeks) facial expression and heart rate variability (HRV) were investigated during three situations: (a) the infant at rest in its crib or incubator, (b) provocation of the withdrawal flexor reflex by application of von Frey's hairs, and (c) lancing and squeezing for blood sampling. Video recordings of facial expressions, mixed at random, were categorised as the baby being either undisturbed, disturbed or in pain and a detailed scoring for each situation was performed. Mean heart rate (HR) was calculated and power spectral analysis was assessed on data from segments of 45-s duration from the three procedures. Flexor withdrawal did not evoke visual signs of pain or influence HRV, but caused a slight increase in HR. The lancing and squeezing of the heel evoked a facial expression of pain in all infants. The HR increased and a reduction in both total HRV and power in the low frequency band of the HRV spectrum was seen during blood sampling. The differentiation between painful and non-painful procedures was more apparent when principal component analysis of HRV was applied.

Acute Disease↗

Are facial displays social? Situational influences in the attribution of emotion to facial expressions.

Observers are remarkably consistent in attributing particular emotions to particular facial expressions, at least in Western societies. Here, we suggest that this consistency is an instance of the fundamental attribution error. We therefore hypothesized that a small variation in the procedure of the recognition study, which emphasizes situational information, would change the participants' attributions. In two studies, participants were asked to judge whether a prototypical "emotional facial expression" was more plausibly associated with a social-communicative situation (one involving communication to another person) or with an equally emotional but nonsocial, situation. Participants were found more likely to associate each facial display with the social than with the nonsocial situation. This result was found across all emotions presented (happiness, fear, disgust, anger, and sadness) and for both Spanish and Canadian participants.

Canada↗

Morphed facial expressions elicited a N400 ERP effect: a domain-specific semantic module?

Previous studies have revealed that decoding of facial expressions is a specific component of face comprehension and that semantic information might be processed separately from the basic stage of face perception. In order to explore event-related potentials (ERPs) related to recognition of facial expressions and the effect of the semantic content of the stimulus, we analyzed 20 normal subjects. Faces with three prototypical emotional expressions (fear, happiness, and sadness) and with three morphed expressions were presented in random order. The neutral stimuli represented the control condition. Whereas ERP profiles were similar with respect to an early negative ERP (N170), differences in peak amplitude were observed later between incongruous (morphed) expressions and congruous (prototypical) ones. In fact, the results demonstrated that the emotional morphed faces elicited a negative peak at about 360 ms, mainly distributed over the posterior site. The electrophysiological activity observed may represent a specific cognitive process underlying decoding of facial expressions in case of semantic anomaly detection. The evidence is in favor of the similarity of this negative deflection with the N400 ERP effect elicited in linguistic tasks. A domain-specific semantic module is proposed to explain these results.

Adult↗

Facial expressions and speechreading performance.

In the present study, the role of facial expressions in visual speechreading (lipreading) was examined. Speechreading was assessed by three different tests: sentence-based speechreading, word-decoding, and word discrimination. Twenty-seven individuals participated as subjects in the study. The results revealed that no general improvement as a function of expression was obtained across all tests. Nevertheless, skilled speechreaders could significantly improve their performance as a function of emotional expression in the word-decoding and word-discrimination conditions. Furthermore, a correlational analysis indicated that there was a significant relationship between the subjects' rating of confidence regarding their responses to each test-item and performance on speechreading tests where lexical analysis is a necessary task-demand. The results are discussed with respect to how information from facial expressions is integrated with the information given by the lip movements in visual speechreading, and also with respect to general models of face-processing (i.e., Bruce & Young, 1986; Young & Bruce, 1991).

Adult↗

[Brief video-assisted observation of visual attention, facial expression, and motor skills for diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)].

Can video assisted observation of visual attention, facial expression and motor skills contribute to the diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? 20 children from 6 to 10 years of age, diagnosed for ADHD following the DSM-IV criteria, and an age and sex matched control group of 20 children with harmless upper airway infections were filmed during 3 minutes playing cards with their mothers and 7 minutes of oral arithmetic exercises. Two persons were trained for eight hours in recognizing 22 signs for visual attention loss, alterated facial expression like oversized and sustained smile and abnormal motor skills in ADHD-patient videos. Then they viewed minutes 2 and 3 and 3 and 4 of the 40 children in a randomized sequence and scored the signs. 8 of the 22 signs showed high (r > .75) and 9 showed medium (r > .6) interrater correlations. The presence of signs in the ADHD and in the control group was highly significantly different (a = 0.01, U-Test of Mann and Whitney) for 10 of the 22 signs and significantly different for other 4 signs (a = 0.05). The four field table comparison between the frequency of the signs showed correct positioning in 80% of all cases. The loss of visual attention was the most frequent sign in ADHD children. The signs of alterated facial expression were also among the highly correlated signs. These are used by us to find the individual dose for stimulant medication.

Attention↗

Recognition of affect in facial expression using the Noh Mask Test: comparison of individuals with schizophrenia and normal controls.

The purpose of the present study was to compare facial expression recognition in individuals with schizophrenia and normal controls using the Noh Mask Test. Fifteen men with schizophrenia and 15 normal controls were presented with a photograph of a Noh mask rotated either upward or downward from the neutral front-facing position, and an emotion label, and were requested to judge whether the expression of the mask was congruent with the indicated emotion. Using multidimensional scaling, the facial expression of the Noh mask recognized by the patients and the healthy controls was analyzed in 3-D: (i) Rejection-Attention; (ii) Pleasant-Unpleasant; and (iii) Awakening-Relaxation. Individuals with schizophrenia had difficulty recognizing that others had intentions of harming them. The Noh Mask Test was found to be useful in discriminating between individuals with schizophrenia and controls in the recognition of facial expression (discriminant ratio: 99.9%).

Adult↗

Recognition of posed and genuine facial expressions of emotion in paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenia.

Most previous research reporting emotion-recognition deficits in schizophrenia has used posed facial expressions of emotion and chronic-schizophrenia patients. In contrast, the present research examined the ability of patients with acute paranoid and nonparanoid (disorganized) schizophrenia to recognize genuine as well as posed facial expressions of emotion. Evidence of an emotion-recognition deficit in schizophrenia was replicated, but only when posed facial expressions were used. For genuine expressions of emotion, the paranoid-schizophrenia group was more accurate than controls, nonparanoid-schizophrenia patients, and depressed patients. Future research clearly needs to consider the posed versus genuine nature of the emotional stimuli used and the type of schizophrenia patients examined.

Adult↗

Facial expression recognition in adolescents with mood and anxiety disorders.

OBJECTIVE: The authors examined facial expression recognition in adolescents with mood and anxiety disorders. METHOD: Standard facial emotion identification tests were given to youth with bipolar disorder (N=11) or DSM-IV anxiety disorders (N=10) and a group of healthy comparison subjects (N=25). RESULTS: Relative to the anxiety disorder and healthy comparison groups, the subjects with bipolar disorder made more emotion recognition errors when presented with faces of children. Unlike the anxious and comparison subjects, bipolar disorder youth were prone to misidentify faces as angry. No differences in emotion recognition errors were seen when the adolescents were presented with adult faces. CONCLUSIONS: A bias to misinterpret the facial expressions of peers as angry may characterize youth with bipolar disorder but not youth with anxiety disorders. This bias may relate to social impairment in youth with bipolar disorder.

Adolescent↗

Detection of facial expressions of emotions in depression.

Research on perceptual and attentional processes in depression has shown that depressed as opposed to nondepressed individuals do not exhibit a positive perceptual bias in multistimulus representations. In the present study a face-in-the-crowd task was applied to examine the relationship between depression and spatial detection of facial expression of positive and negative emotions. A face-in-the-crowd task was administered to 30 subjects (15 clinically stabilized depressed inpatients and 15 normal subjects) using displays of schematic faces. Depressed subjects showed no performance differences in the detection of negative faces and no differences in decision latency for the control condition (all neutral faces) compared to normal subjects. Depressed subjects, however, were significantly slower in responding to positive faces than normal subjects. Our data suggest that depressive mood is associated with a reduced spatial attention to positive facial expression and not with an abnormal spatial processing of negative facial expression. An implication is that lowered vigilance for facial expressions of joy and happiness may affect adversely interpersonal relationships in depressed subjects.

Adult↗

Disgust-specific impairment of facial expression recognition in Parkinson's disease.

There is contradictory evidence regarding whether the impairments of the recognition of emotional facial expressions in Parkinson's disease are specific to certain emotions such as disgust and fear. Generally, neurological case reports on emotion-specific impairments have been suspected of being confounded with the factor of task difficulty. Using a refined assessment method in which the difficulty factors were controlled by means of mixed facial expressions and item response theory, we attempted to clarify whether Parkinson's disease disproportionately impaired the recognition of specific emotions. We studied 14 patients with Parkinson's disease and 39 healthy controls who were matched in terms of gender, age, years of education and intelligence quotient. Whereas the refined method revealed that the patients with Parkinson's disease displayed significantly lower scores in disgust recognition alone, conventional methods failed to detect this impairment. In addition, control measures including face recognition abilities did not statistically explain the impairment observed in the patients. The results indicate that Parkinson's disease can indeed selectively impair the recognition of facial expressions of disgust; this provides concrete evidence for emotion-specific impairments that sufficiently withstands criticisms regarding the difficulty artefacts. Furthermore, the results support the proposed role of the basal ganglia-insula system in disgust recognition. This study effectively demonstrates the benefits of refining neuropsychological assessment by taking advantage of the modern psychometric theory.

Aged↗

Facial expressions and complex IAPS pictures: common and differential networks.

Neuroimaging studies investigating emotion have commonly used two different visual stimulus formats, facial expressions of emotion or emotionally evocative scenes. However, it remains an important unanswered question whether or not these different stimulus formats entail the same processes. Facial expressions of emotion may elicit more emotion recognition/perception, and evocative pictures may elicit more direct experience of emotion. In spite of these differences, common areas of activation have been reported across different studies, but little work has investigated activations in response to the two stimulus formats in the same subjects. In this fMRI study, we compared BOLD activation patterns to facial expression of emotions and to complex emotional pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) to determine if these stimuli would activate similar or distinct brain regions. Healthy volunteers passively viewed blocks of expressive faces and IAPS pictures balanced for specific emotion (happy, sad, anger, fear, neutral), interleaved with blocks of fixation. Eye movement, reaction times, and off-line subjective ratings including discrete emotion, valence, and arousal were also recorded. Both faces and IAPS pictures activated similar structures, including the amygdala, posterior hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and visual cortex. In addition, expressive faces uniquely activated the superior temporal gyrus, insula, and anterior cingulate more than IAPS pictures, despite the faces being less arousing. For the most part, these regions were activated in response to all specific emotions; however, some regions responded only to a subset.

Adult↗

Visual discrimination and recognition of facial expressions of anger, fear, and surprise in 4- to 6-month-old infants.

On the assumption that the ability to discriminate facial expressions has adaptive value to infants during early social exchanges, ethologically based theorists have argued that this ability is innate. Guided by this perspective, we investigated the ability of infants, 4-6 months old to recognize and discriminate facial expressions of anger, fear, and surprise. Results obtained with an infant-controlled habituation-recovery procedure showed that infants both discriminated and recognized these expressions when portrayed by several adult female models. In addition, infants spent more time looking at expressions of anger and surprise than at fear expressions. These results suggest that infants can abstract configurations of features that give affective meaning to facial expressions. It is suggested that the differences in habituation to each expression might be the result of their distinct functional signification for the infant.

Anger↗

Why do fear and anger look the way they do? Form and social function in facial expressions.

The origins of the appearances of anger and fear facial expressions are not well understood. The authors tested the hypothesis that such origins might lie in the expressions' resemblance to, respectively, mature and babyish faces in three studies. In Study 1, faces expressing anger and fear were judged to physically resemble mature and babyish faces. Study 2 indicated that characteristics associated specifically with babyishness are attributed to persons showing fear, whereas characteristics associated with maturity are attributed to persons showing anger. In Study 3, composite faces were used to minimize the possibility that the attributions were based on associations to the anger and fear emotions alone rather than to the physical resemblance of the expressions to static facial appearance cues. These results suggest that fear and anger expressions may serve socially adaptive purposes for those who show them, similar to the social adaptations associated with a babyish or mature facial appearance.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Facial expression and emotional face recognition in schizophrenia and depression.

Twenty-three acute schizophrenics, 21 acute major depressives (Research Diagnostic Criteria), and 15 normal controls participated in a study on facial expression and emotional face recognition. Under clinical conditions, spontaneous facial expression was assessed according to the affective flattening section of the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms. Under experimental laboratory conditions involuntary (emotion-eliciting interview) and voluntary facial expression (imitation and simulation of six basic emotions) were recorded on videotape, from which a raterbased analysis of intensity or correctness of facial activity was obtained. Emotional face recognition was also assessed under experimental conditions using the same stimulus material. All subjects were assessed twice (within 4 weeks), controlling for change of the psychopathological status in the patient groups. In schizophrenics, neuroleptic drug influence was controlled by random allocation to treatment with either haloperidol or perazine. The main findings were that schizophrenics and depressives are characterized by different quantitative, qualitative, and temporal patterns of affect-related dysfunctions. In particular, schizophrenics demonstrated a trait-like deficit in affect recognition and in their spontaneous and voluntary facial activity, irrespective of medication, drug type and dosage, or extrapyramidal side-effects. In depressives a stable deficit could be demonstrated only in their involuntary expression under emotion-eliciting interview conditions, whereas in the postacute phase a reduction in their voluntary expression became apparent. Differences in patterns of affect-related behavioral deficits may reflect dysfunctions in different underlying psychobiological systems.

Adult↗

The amygdala of patients with Parkinson's disease is silent in response to fearful facial expressions.

We previously found that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) were impaired with respect to recognition of fear and disgust in facial expressions. To investigate the neural mechanisms that underlie this impairment, we recorded visual event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to the viewing of fearful facial expressions. Ten normal elderly volunteers and nine patients with PD were studied. Fearful, surprised, and neutral facial expressions were presented randomly for 500 ms each, with a probability of 0.1, 0.1, and 0.8, respectively. The locations of the components of the ERPs were analyzed using a scalp-skull-brain/dipole tracing method. The ERPs elicited in response to the facial stimuli consisted of a negative peak (N1), two positive peaks, and a subsequent slow negative shift. For N1, the equivalent current dipoles were concentrated in the fusiform gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, cingulate cortex, and cerebellum, in normal subjects. In response to the fearful stimulus, dipoles were also generated from the amygdala in seven out of 10 normal subjects. In contrast, in patients with PD, N1 was centered bilaterally in the angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus, and there was no neuronal activity in the amygdala. After N1, dipoles moved toward the frontal region in normal subjects, whereas they remained in the parietal lobes in patients with PD. These results suggest that neither the amygdala nor the temporal visual-associated cortices are involved in responding to fearful expressions in patients with PD. Corticostriatal connections may be variably affected by a lack of dopamine or by pathological changes in the amygdala. Thus, somatosensory recruitment may overcome the mild cognitive emotional deficits that are present in patients with PD owing to a dysfunction of the amygdala.

Aged↗