Do you match what I match? A systematic review of 20 years of the emotional face matching task reveals vast inconsistencies in design and implementation.

Abstract

We performed a systematic review of 20 years of literature that implemented a variant of theEmotional Face Matching Task (EFMT). We aimed to quantify the heterogeneity in tasks used acrossstudies, and to summarise the regions reported as activated when participants match the target facestimuli, as compared to matching the control stimuli, within and between patients with a mentalhealth diagnosis and unaffected controls. Our results highlight the vast heterogeneity in all aspects oftask design and implementation across studies. Our high-level synthesis of brain regions activatedbroadly confirm the involvement of the amygdala during emotional face matching, but show that anincrease in amygdala activation is inconsistent both within and across mental health conditions. Wefurther highlight increased activation within the cingulate cortex as a transdiagnostic alteration (vs.controls) during emotional face matching. We introduce solutions to address the challenge ofheterogeneity, including a standard version of the EFMT and applicable statistical methods, andprovide recommendations for the field to progress our understanding of emotional face processing.