Emotional facial expressions reduce neural adaptation to face identity

Abstract

In human social interactions, facial emotional expressions are a crucial source of information. Repeatedly presented information typically leads to an adaptation of neural responses. However, processing seems sustained with emotional facial expressions. Therefore, we tested whether sustained processing of emotional expressions, especially threat-related expressions, would attenuate neural adaptation. Neutral and emotional expressions (happy, mixed and fearful) of same and different identity were presented at 3 Hz. We used electroencephalography to record the evoked steady-state visual potentials (ssVEP) and tested to what extent the ssVEP amplitude adapts to the same when compared with different face identities. We found adaptation to the identity of a neutral face. However, for emotional faces, adaptation was reduced, decreasing linearly with negative valence, with the least adaptation to fearful expressions. This short and straightforward method may prove to be a valuable new tool in the study of emotional processing.

The face evoked steady-state visual potentials are sensitive to the orientation, viewpoint, expression and configuration of the stimuli

“…While we did not compare the magnitude of ADA effects between the conditions with neutral and emotional faces, the topography of these effects is quite different from that reported by Gerlicher et al (2014). The SSVEP ADA effect for neutral faces in the Gerlicher et al (2014) study emerged over several occipital electrodes close to the midline, which is different from the more lateralized effect observed in the present study. Therefore, these differences in the spatial distributions of ADA effects across studies presumably reflect different levels of face-related processing.…”

“…A recent study using SSVEPs found reduced ADA to facial identity with faces displaying emotional expressions when compared with neutral faces (Gerlicher et al, 2014). While we did not compare the magnitude of ADA effects between the conditions with neutral and emotional faces, the topography of these effects is quite different from that reported by Gerlicher et al (2014).…”

“…A recent study has shown that the reduction of the SSVEP to repeated identities is smaller for emotional faces when compared with faces with neutral expression, and that this reduction is more pronounced in the case of negative when compared with positive valence expressions (Gerlicher et al, 2014). Interestingly, the ADA effect in that study was confined to several medial occipital electrode sites, and this distribution is different from the cluster of right hemisphere occipitotemporal channels implicated in previous studies (Rossion and Boremanse, 2011;Rossion et al, 2012).…”

Steady‐state visual evoked potentials as a research tool in social affective neuroscience

“…In contrast to transient ERPs, ssVEPs elicited by face stimuli allow for a more fine grained examination of individual face discrimination, perceptual face detection (Rossion, 2014), sustained attention and facial expression discrimination (McTeague, Shumen, Wieser, Lang, & Keil, 2011), as well as the interaction of facial expressions and individual face identity (Gerlicher, van Loon, Scholte, Lamme, & van der Leij, 2013). …”

Toward a Perceptual Account of Mindreading

“…More precisely, adaptation is strongest for neutral faces and decreases significantly for fearful faces (Gerlicher et al. ), which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. The aftereffects are thus selectively sensitive to emotions, which further strengthens the point that adaptation acts on the level of the category of emotion, and not on structural differences…”