Early Right Motor Cortex Response to Happy and Fearful Facial Expressions: A TMS Motor-Evoked Potential Study

Abstract

The ability to rapidly process others’ emotional signals is crucial for adaptive social interactions. However, to date it is still unclear how observing emotional facial expressions affects the reactivity of the human motor cortex. To provide insights on this issue, we employed single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate corticospinal motor excitability. Healthy participants observed happy, fearful and neutral pictures of facial expressions while receiving TMS over the left or right motor cortex at 150 and 300 ms after picture onset. In the early phase (150 ms), we observed an enhancement of corticospinal excitability for the observation of happy and fearful emotional faces compared to neutral expressions specifically in the right hemisphere. Interindividual differences in the disposition to experience aversive feelings (personal distress) in interpersonal emotional contexts predicted the early increase in corticospinal excitability for emotional faces. No differences in corticospinal excitability were observed at the later time (300 ms) or in the left M1. These findings support the notion that emotion perception primes the body for action and highlights the role of the right hemisphere in implementing a rapid and transient facilitatory response to emotional arousing stimuli, such as emotional facial expressions.

Anxiety, Perceived Stress, and Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Population Estimates of Persons Presenting to a General Practitioner in Romania

“…Ellena et al confirm the defensive functional definition of IPS by emphasizing how responses to approach stimuli modulate autonomic arousal as a function of the distance between the perceiver and the stimuli, resulting in an appropriate organization of defensive reactions [ 15 ]. The use of single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to explore the temporal sequence of the motor system output to relevant arousing stimuli proved to be of great value, reflecting the preparation of adaptive motor responses required for the execution of appropriate and protective behaviors [ 16 ]. Moreover, it is worth noting the many other contributing factors for increased stress, like the threat of contracting the virus, infection or death of loved ones, loneliness because of social isolation, quarantine measures, financial instability, and poverty as a result of huge job loss, and last but not least excessive consumption of information from the media.…”

Emotional Modulation of Episodic Memory in School-Age Children and Adults: An Event-Related Potential Study

“…Thus, interindividual differences may potentially account for this lack of effect for positive pictures in ERP responses in our study, especially since a recent study by the Ref. [ 53 ] has shown that interindividual differences can predict how one will perceive and respond to emotional information.…”

Neural Decoding of EEG Signals with Machine Learning: A Systematic Review

“…Research has focused on classifying and predicting emotion dimensions while participants perform in externally driven activities, including watching video clips, facial pictures, and sequences of images [ 65 , 218 , 219 ]. In addition to exposure to these external stimuli, expression of the basic innate emotions (i.e., fear, anger, surprise, sadness, happiness, and disgust) causes different behavioral responses in individuals [ 220 , 221 ], Notably, fearful facial expression is a threatening stimulus resulting in an appropriate organization of defensive responses [ 222 ]. Moreover, environmental factors, such as approaching direction [ 223 ] have contributed to clarifying the effects of behavioral responses (i.e., defensive responses).…”