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At least 865 records · Page 48Linked to original sources
PubMed2003

Tryptophan depletion decreases the recognition of fear in female volunteers.

RATIONALE: Serotonergic processes have been implicated in the modulation of fear conditioning in humans, postulated to occur at the level of the amygdala. The processing of other fear-relevant cues, such as facial expressions, has also been associated with amygdala function, but an effect of serotonin depletion on these processes has not been assessed. OBJECTIVE: The present study investigated the effects of reducing serotonin function, using acute tryptophan depletion, on the recognition of basic facial expressions of emotions in healthy male and female volunteers. METHODS: A double-blind between-groups design was used, with volunteers being randomly allocated to receive an amino acid drink specifically lacking tryptophan or a control mixture containing a balanced mixture of these amino acids. Participants were given a facial expression recognition task 5 h after drink administration. This task featured examples of six basic emotions (fear, anger, disgust, surprise, sadness and happiness) that had been morphed between each full emotion and neutral in 10% steps. As a control, volunteers were given a famous face classification task matched in terms of response selection and difficulty level. RESULTS: Tryptophan depletion significantly impaired the recognition of fearful facial expressions in female, but not male, volunteers. This was specific since recognition of other basic emotions was comparable in the two groups. There was also no effect of tryptophan depletion on the classification of famous faces or on subjective state ratings of mood or anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: These results confirm a role for serotonin in the processing of fear related cues, and in line with previous findings also suggest greater effects of tryptophan depletion in female volunteers. Although acute tryptophan depletion does not typically affect mood in healthy subjects, the present results suggest that subtle changes in the processing of emotional material may occur with this manipulation of serotonin function.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Quantification of the efficacy of botulinum toxin type A by digital image analysis.

BACKGROUND: Botulinum toxin type A (BT-A) is increasingly being used by dermatologists for correction of frown lines. Because objective measurements of clinical results appear to be difficult, several different treatment protocols have been issued purely empirically or on the basis of subjective ratings. OBJECTIVE: Our purpose was to establish objective parameters to measure the efficacy of BT-A for correction of hyperkinetic facial lines. METHODS: Thirty consecutive patients received BT-A injections for correction of facial expression lines. For each patient a full range of facial expressions was recorded by means of a digital imaging system that allowed identical positioning and illumination before and after treatment. Computer-assisted measurements of brow mobility were used to measure muscular paralysis. RESULTS: Reproducibility of serial photographs by means of a digital overlay technique was confirmed by 4 independent observers. Upward mobility of brows was decreased to 35% at 2 weeks and 71% at 12 weeks after treatment. In contrast, inward mobility (frowning) was decreased to 7% at 2 weeks and 57% at 12 weeks. Brow-to-brow distance in repose increased with treatment by 13% and displayed a negative correlation with age. CONCLUSION: The effects of BT-A on upper face muscular activity can reproducibly be measured by digital image analysis; this is a valuable tool for clinical documentation and evaluation of treatment efficacy. Onset and offset of the effects of BT-A display a longer time course than previously assumed. Tissue qualities such as elasticity contribute measurably to smoothing facial expression lines after BT-A treatment and correlate inversely with age.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

The classification of 'fear' from faces is associated with face recognition skill in women.

Two experiments were conducted to explore the relationship between the discrimination of the facial expression of 'fear' in faces and facial recognition. On the basis of the reported role of the amygdala in both processes in patients, we hypothesised that the two skills would be correlated in normal adults. In Experiment 1, a series of tests of facial expression categorisation, of face matching and of familiar and unfamiliar face recognition was conducted on normal young women, for whom psychometric scores were also obtained (n=23). Accuracy of categorisation of fear from faces predicted variance in face recognition accuracy-especially in tasks of unfamiliar face recognition (immediate old-new discrimination). No other correlations between face processing and expression classification were significant. Experiment 2 repeated the expression classification tests and an unfamiliar face recognition test on a new sample of men (n=13) and women (n=16). While there were no sex differences in face recognition, the correlation between 'fear' and face recognition was replicated only for women. These data indicate that the amygdala supports both the specific apprehension of fear in faces and face recognition in adult human females, but that the association may not hold for men. Sex differences in the structure of the amygdala-hippocampal complex suggest a likely cortical substrate for the observed differences. We speculate that social learning, which involves identifying the faces of potentially salient others, and also their attitude to the observer, engages the amygdala more readily in women than in men.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Attention bias to faces in Asperger Syndrome: a pictorial emotion Stroop study.

BACKGROUND: Emotional Stroop tasks have shown attention biases of clinical populations towards stimuli related to their condition. Asperger Syndrome (AS) is a neuropsychiatric condition with social and communication deficits, repetitive behaviours and narrow interests. Social deficits are particularly striking, including difficulties in understanding others. METHOD: We investigated colour-naming latencies of adults with and without AS to name colours of pictures containing angry facial expressions, neutral expressions or non-social objects. We tested three hypotheses: whether (1) controls show longer colour-naming latencies for angry versus neutral facial expressions with male actors, (2) people with AS show differential latencies across picture types, and (3) differential response latencies persist when photographs contain females. RESULTS: Controls had longer latencies to pictures of male faces with angry compared to neutral expressions. The AS group did not show longer latencies to angry versus neutral expressions in male faces, instead showing slower latencies to pictures containing any facial expression compared to objects. When pictures contained females, controls no longer showed longer latencies for angry versus neutral expressions. However, the AS group still showed longer latencies to all facial picture types, compared to objects, providing further evidence that faces produce interference effects for this clinical group. CONCLUSIONS: The pictorial emotional Stroop paradigm reveals normal attention biases towards threatening emotional faces. The AS group showed Stroop interference effects to all facial stimuli regardless of expression or sex, suggesting that faces cause disproportionate interference in AS.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Neural correlates of facial affect processing in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the neural basis of impairments in interpreting facial emotions in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). METHOD: Twelve children and adolescents with ASD and 12 typically developing (TD) controls matched faces by emotion and assigned a label to facial expressions while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. RESULTS: Both groups engaged similar neural networks during facial emotion processing, including activity in the fusiform gyrus (FG) and prefrontal cortex. However, between-group analyses in regions of interest revealed that when matching facial expressions, the ASD group showed significantly less activity than the TD group in the FG, but reliably greater activity in the precuneus. During the labeling of facial emotions, no between-group differences were observed at the behavioral or neural level. Furthermore, activity in the amygdala was moderated by task demands in the TD group but not in the ASD group. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that children and adolescents with ASD in part recruit different neural networks and rely on different strategies when processing facial emotions. High-functioning individuals with ASD may be relatively unimpaired in the cognitive assessment of basic emotions, yet still show differences in the automatic processing of facial expressions.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Impaired facial affect recognition and emotional changes in subjects with transmodal cortical lesions.

The present study attempts to identify cortical lesion sites associated with deficits in the decoding of emotional facial expressions and with changes of emotional states. A consecutive sample of 68 subjects with lesions caused by microsurgical tumor resection or by intracerebral hemorrhage were compared with 16 clinical and 15 healthy control subjects. A set of neuropsychological test measures - two experimental tasks requiring the sorting and rating of emotional facial expressions, and an adjective checklist as a measure of mood state - were administered. An analysis according to the functional properties of the areas with lesions revealed that subjects with combined lesions of heteromodal and limbic/ paralimbic cortices of the right hemisphere showed the strongest deficits in the decoding of emotional facial expressions. In contrast, subjects with lesions of limbic/paralimbic cortices alone, or subjects with lesions of unimodal or primary motor or sensory cortices displayed only minor deficits. Subjects with combined lesions of heteromodal and limbic/paralimbic cortices of the left hemisphere showed the most negative mood states. Our results suggest that heteromodal and limbic/paralimbic, i.e. transmodal cortices may be viewed as 'bottleneck' structures for the decoding of emotional facial expressions and for the modulation of mood states. Lesions of transmodal cortices deprive limbic structures of one of their main sources of input and are therefore likely to produce deficits in various forms of complex human emotional-cognitive behaviors and emotional states.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Letting your face do your talking.

Throughout the world, facial expression is generally noted in conversation and is used as an integral part of the communication between individuals. Since nursing occurs in an interpersonal arena, nurses need to be especially aware of facial expression and eye behavior and the meaning that may be associated with different expressions. It is important to understand facial expression from a multicultural vantage since the meaning of expressions varies in different cultures.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Human amygdala responses during presentation of happy and neutral faces: correlations with state anxiety.

BACKGROUND: Previous functional imaging studies demonstrating amygdala response to happy facial expressions have all included the presentation of negatively valenced primary comparison expressions within the experimental context. This study assessed amygdala response to happy and neutral facial expressions in an experimental paradigm devoid of primary negatively valenced comparison expressions. METHODS: Sixteen human subjects (eight female) viewed 16-sec blocks of alternating happy and neutral faces interleaved with a baseline fixation condition during two functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. RESULTS: Within the ventral amygdala, a negative correlation between happy versus neutral signal changes and state anxiety was observed. The majority of the variability associated with this effect was explained by a positive relationship between state anxiety and signal change to neutral faces. CONCLUSIONS: Interpretation of amygdala responses to facial expressions of emotion will be influenced by considering the contribution of each constituent condition within a greater subtractive finding, as well as 1) their spatial location within the amygdaloid complex; and 2) the experimental context in which they were observed. Here, an observed relationship between state anxiety and ventral amygdala response to happy versus neutral faces was explained by response to neutral faces.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Intramuscular electrical stimulation of facial muscles in humans and chimpanzees: Duchenne revisited and extended.

The pioneering work of Duchenne (1862/1990) was replicated in humans using intramuscular electrical stimulation and extended to another species (Pan troglodytes: chimpanzees) to facilitate comparative facial expression research. Intramuscular electrical stimulation, in contrast to the original surface stimulation, offers the opportunity to activate individual muscles as opposed to groups of muscles. In humans, stimulation resulted in appearance changes in line with Facial Action Coding System (FACS) action units (AUs), and chimpanzee facial musculature displayed functional similarity to human facial musculature. The present results provide objective identification of the muscle substrate of human and chimpanzee facial expressions- data that will be useful in providing a common language to compare the units of human and chimpanzee facial expression.

Action Potentials↗
PubMed1990

The Duchenne smile: emotional expression and brain physiology. II.

Facial expression, EEG, and self-report of subjective emotional experience were recorded while subjects individually watched both pleasant and unpleasant films. Smiling in which the muscle that orbits the eye is active in addition to the muscle that pulls the lip corners up (the Duchenne smile) was compared with other smiling in which the muscle orbiting the eye was not active. As predicted, the Duchenne smile was related to enjoyment in terms of occurring more often during the pleasant than the unpleasant films, in measures of cerebral asymmetry, and in relation to subjective reports of positive emotions, and other smiling was not.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

ADHD and schizophrenia phenomenology: visual scanpaths to emotional faces as a potential psychophysiological marker?

Commonalities in the clinical phenomenology and psychopharmacology of ADHD and schizophrenia are reviewed. The potential of psychostimulants to produce psychotic symptoms emphasizes the need for objective psychophysiological distinctions between these disorders. Impaired emotion perception in both disorders is discussed. It is proposed that visual scanpaths to facial expressions of emotion might prove a potentially useful psychophysiological distinction between ADHD and schizophrenia. There is consistent evidence that both facial affect recognition and scanpaths to facial expressions are impaired in schizophrenia, with emerging empirical evidence showing that facial affect recognition is impaired in ADHD also. Brain imaging studies show reduced activity in the medial prefrontal and limbic (amygdala) brain regions required to process emotional faces in schizophrenia, but suggest more localized loss of activity in these regions in ADHD. As amygdala activity in particular has been linked to effective visual scanning of face stimuli, it is postulated that condition-specific breakdowns in these brain regions that subserve emotional behavior might manifest as distinct scanpath aberrations to facial expressions of emotion in schizophrenia and ADHD.

Amygdala↗
PubMed2003

Frontal lobe networks for effective processing of ambiguously expressed emotions in humans.

This study examines the neural substrates involved in the recognition of ambiguous facial expressions using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Subjects performed two tasks, one in which they judged facial expressions and another in which they identified gender. Subtraction between ambiguous expression and clear expression conditions revealed the activation of anterior cingulate (ACC), medial frontal (MeFG) and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Structural equation modeling showed that the functional connectivity between these areas was greater with the ambiguous expressions than with the clear ones. The activation of the ACC, MeFG, and right IFG was greater with ambiguous expressions than with ambiguous gender. These results suggest that the neural network involving these frontal regions plays a crucial role in the processing of the ambiguously expressed facial emotions.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Expression of emotion and quality of life after facial nerve paralysis.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the facial expression of emotion and quality of life in patients after long-term facial nerve paralysis. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: Facial nerve paralysis clinic. PATIENTS: Twenty-four patients with facial nerve paralysis and 24 significant others (partner, relative, friend). INTERVENTION: Patients were assessed using Sunnybrook, Sydney, and House-Brackmann grading scales and SF-36, Glasgow Benefit Inventory, and Facial Disability Index quality-of-life measures. RESULTS: When patients identified themselves as either effective or not effective at facially communicating each of Ekman's primary emotions (happiness, disgust, surprise, anger, sadness, and fear), 50% classified themselves as not effective at expressing one or more of the six emotions. Significant others of the not effective patients rated the emotions as more difficult for their partner-patients to communicate facially than did the significant others of effective patients. The SF-36 quality-of-life survey revealed lower social functioning relative to physical functioning for not effective patients. From the Sunnybrook Facial Grading System, more synkinesis was found for those patients not effective at expressing happiness, less brow and eye movement for patients not effective at expressing sadness, and less voluntary movement for those not effective with surprise. CONCLUSION: Movement deficits associated with expressing specific emotions and an association with quality-of-life measures were identified in patients with long-term facial nerve paralysis who saw themselves as not effective at facial expression of emotions. To improve management of emotional expression in patients with facial nerve paralysis, a broader approach is recommended, linking the practitioner's treatment goals with patient-driven outcome goals.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Disengagement of attention from facial emotion in unipolar depression.

Abnormal processing of facial expressions is assumed to be an important factor mediating the course of depression. The aim of the present study was to investigate the ability to disengage attention from facial emotion in depressed patients in the course of an inpatient treatment program. It was hypothesized that in depression disengagement of visual attention from negative facial expression is delayed, while disengagement from positive facial expression is facilitated. A face-in-the-crowd task using schematic stimuli and crowds of neutral and emotion faces as 'distractor' stimuli was administered to depressed patients and normal controls matched for age, sex, and education. Patients with major depression (n=15) and normal controls (n=15) were tested twice, about 6 weeks apart. From test 1 to test 2, patients' depressivity decreased significantly. Depressives showed higher response latencies and error rates than control subjects. However, depressed patients exhibited the same scanning pattern for facial emotion as healthy individuals across both test sessions. Participants detected a negative face more rapidly in a crowd of faces than a positive face. When displays consisted of repetitions of the same face, subjects were generally slower (and less accurate) when faces were negative relative to positive or neutral. The present data suggest that the ability to disengage attention from facial emotion in visual search is not impaired in depression.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Autonomic response patterns during voluntary facial action.

The effects of six voluntarily adopted emotional facial expressions on heart rate, respiration, emotional report, and effort ratings were examined. The results indicate that the facial expressions that were most difficult to produce (anger, fear, and sadness) showed larger cardiac accelerations than those that were easy to produce (disgust and surprise); the happiness expression fell somewhere in between. Emotional self-report revealed that in the majority of the facial configuration trials subjects experienced only moderate or no emotion at all. In addition to the emotional configurations, a nonemotional expression was examined. Post hoc comparisons showed that the heart rate data of the nonemotional face were not significantly different from any of the other emotional expressions. With respect to respiration, the production of facial expressions induced an increase in functional residual capacity, and decrease in tidal volume, shortened inspiratory and expiratory phase duration, and an increase in inspiratory pause duration. These effects were most pronounced during the facial expressions that were difficult to produce. We conclude that changes in heart rate are not the consequence of the capacity of facial activity to recruit emotion-specific autonomic activity but instead are modulated by effort-related changes in respiration.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Effects of nonverbal behavior on perceptions of power bases.

Among a sample of U.S. students, the effects of 3 forms of nonverbal behavior (facial expression, visual behavior, and body posture) on perceptions of power bases (reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, expert, and credibility) were investigated. In contrast to previous investigations of nonverbal behavior and power, a precise construct definition and reliable and valid operational definitions of power were used, and specific perceptions of power bases were examined. A relaxed facial expression, compared with a nervous facial expression, increased the ratings for referent, reward, legitimate, expert, and credibility power bases. Also, direct eye contact yielded higher credibility ratings than indirect eye contact.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Effects of exposure on perception of pain expression.

The present study evaluated the effects of exposure to facial expression of pain, on observers' perceptions of pain expression. Thirty-one male and 49 female observers judged 1-s video excerpts in a signal detection paradigm. The excerpts showed facial expressions of shoulder-pain patients displaying no pain or moderate pain. Participants were randomly allocated to one of four groups, which varied in the number of prior exposures of a 1 s display of strong pain. On each test trial, participants indicated whether the test stimulus showed no pain or pain. Data were analyzed using signal detection theory methods. There was a linear relationship between the density of exposure to strong pain and observers' response criteria: greater exposure was associated with more conservative decisions. On average, participants showed very high levels of sensitivity to pain expression, with women significantly outperforming men. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for pain judgments of health care professionals, adaptation-level theory, and the psychophysical method of selective adaptation.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMed1994

Encoding and decoding of pain expressions: a judgement study.

The communication of pain requires a sufferer to encode and transmit the experience and an observer to decode and interpret it. Rosenthal's (1982) model of communication was applied to an analysis of the role of facial expression in the transmission of pain information. Videotapes of patients with shoulder pain undergoing a series of movements of the shoulder were shown to a group of 5 judges. Observers and patients provided ratings of the patients' pain on the same verbal descriptor scales. Analyses addressed relationships among patients' pain reports, observers' judgements of patients' pain and measures of patients' facial expressions based on the Facial Action Coding System. The results indicated that although observers can make coarse distinctions among patients' pain states, they (1) are not especially sensitive, and (2) are likely to systematically downgrade the intensity of patients' suffering. Moreover, observers appear to make insufficient use of information that is available in patients' facial expression. Implications of the findings for pain patients and for training of health-care workers are discussed as are directions for future research.

Adult↗