Corrugator muscle responses are associated with individual differences in positivity-negativity bias.

Abstract

Corrugator supercilii muscle activity is considered an objective measure of valence because it increases in response to negatively valenced facial expressions (angry) and decreases to positive expressions (happy). The authors sought to determine if corrugator activity could be used as an objective measure of positivity-negativity bias. The authors recorded corrugator responses as participants rated angry, happy, and surprised faces as "positive" or "negative." The critical measure of bias was the percentage of positive versus negative ratings assigned to surprised faces by each participant. Reaction times for surprise expressions were longer than for happy and angry expressions, consistent with their ambiguous valence. Participants who tended to rate surprised faces as negative showed increased corrugator activity to surprised faces, whereas those who tended to rate surprise as positive showed decreased activity. Critically, corrugator responses reflected the participants' bias (i.e., their tendency to rate surprise as positive or negative). These data show that surprised faces constitute a useful tool for assessing individual differences in positivity-negativity bias, and that corrugator activity can objectively reflect this bias.

The Face of Negative Affect: Trial-by-Trial Corrugator Responses to Negative Pictures Are Positively Associated with Amygdala and Negatively Associated with Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Activity

“…Specifically, EMG activity of the corrugator muscle is potentiated by negative emotion provoked by pictures (Lang et al, 1993) and sounds (Larsen et al, 2003), and attenuated by positive stimuli (Larsen et al, 2003; Neta, Norris, & Whalen, 2009; Rymarczyk, Biele, Grabowska, & Majczynski, 2011). Importantly, when used to index changes in emotional responses following the instruction to regulate negative-picture induced emotion, corrugator EMG activity shows high test-retest reliability (Lee, Shackman, Jackson, & Davidson, 2009), which compares favorably to another valence-sensitive measure previously used to index affective changes in a functional neuroimaging study, the acoustic startle probe (Anders et al, 2004).…”

Measuring Appeal in Human Computer Interaction: A Cognitive Neuroscience-Based Approach

“…Related to this, facial electromyography (fEMG) involves placing electrodes over specific muscle groups on the face. Minimal face muscle activation allows inferring affective states [33][34][35][36][37]. Previous studies have used fEMG for measuring pleasantness and appeal [38,39].…”

On the use of instantaneous mean frequency estimated from the Hilbert spectrum of facial electromyography for differentiating core affects

“…The baseline was subtracting from the mean IMN (presented 20s) accordingly. The facial EMG IMNF were Z-transformed within each part muscle like Neta et al [10] to remove indi since our goal was to investigate the effect response to core affects according to grou based on their potential affective states eli picture blocks. Thereafter the Z-score was way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).…”

“…: amplitude) with normalization, such as log 10 transformation [9] and Z score [10], and other features such as the mean or median frequency (MNF or MDF) based on the Fourier transform (e.g. : [11]).…”