Fear boosts the early neural coding of faces

Abstract

The rapid extraction of facial identity and emotional expressions is critical for adapted social interactions. These biologically relevant abilities have been associated with early neural responses on the face sensitive N170 component. However, whether all facial expressions uniformly modulate the N170, and whether this effect occurs only when emotion categorization is task-relevant, is still unclear. To clarify this issue, we recorded high-resolution electrophysiological signals while 22 observers perceived the six basic expressions plus neutral. We used a repetition suppression paradigm, with an adaptor followed by a target face displaying the same identity and expression (trials of interest). We also included catch trials to which participants had to react, by varying identity (identity-task), expression (expression-task) or both (dual-task) on the target face. We extracted single-trial Repetition Suppression (stRS) responses using a data-driven spatiotemporal approach with a robust hierarchical linear model to isolate adaptation effects on the trials of interest. Regardless of the task, fear was the only expression modulating the N170, eliciting the strongest stRS responses. This observation was corroborated by distinct behavioral performance during the catch trials for this facial expression. Altogether, our data reinforce the view that fear elicits distinct neural processes in the brain, enhancing attention and facilitating the early coding of faces.

Association between migraine frequency and neural response to emotional faces: An fMRI study

“…Of interest, our results revealed increased activation in migraine patients for the facial expression of fear. This sensitivity might be related to the perception of potential danger (threat detection) which is prioritized automatically (Turano et al, 2017; Williams, 2006; Williams et al, 2006). However, reaction times to fearful stimuli in migraine patients were comparable to those showed by healthy controls.…”

Task Demands Modulate Effects of Threatening Faces on Early Perceptual Encoding

“…However, their hypothesis is contested because studies have yielded mixed results. In some studies, the N170 was enhanced in response to emotional faces as opposed to neutral faces (Batty and Taylor, 2003; Schyns et al, 2007; Leppanen et al, 2008; Righart and de Gelder, 2008; Smith et al, 2013; Turano et al, 2017), but in other studies the N170 remained insensitive to facial expressions (Pourtois et al, 2005; Rellecke et al, 2012; Calvo and Beltran, 2013; Tamamiya and Hiraki, 2013; Neath-Tavares and Itier, 2016; for review, see Hinojosa et al, 2015). These discrepancies may be related to methodological differences in the research, such as the choice of reference electrodes (Joyce and Rossion, 2005; Rellecke et al, 2013) or stimulus features (daSilva et al, 2016; Schindler et al, 2019).…”

Ecological micro-expression recognition characteristics of young adults with subthreshold depression

“…This phenomenon is consistent with the happy-face-recognition superiority effect that was revealed by a recent review [49] which suggests that participants were more sensitive to happy MEs than to other MEs. In addition, compared with sad and neutral MEs, fearful MEs can convey potentially threatening information, and these types of expressions are of important evolutionary significance and are more likely to capture attention [50]. This could provide an explanation for the higher effectiveness and speed in processing and recognizing fearful MEs.…”