The power of imagination — How anticipatory mental imagery alters perceptual processing of fearful facial expressions

Diekhof, Esther K.; Kipshagen, Hanne Elisabeth; Falkai, Peter; Dechent, Peter; Baudewig, Jürgen; Gruber, Oliver

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.08.034

Cited by 37 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 121 publications

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“…Cortical feedback, for instance, could arise from higher face processing areas (e.g. FFA; see Strother et al, 2011) or areas within the PFC, as observed during mental imagery of faces (Kim et al, 2007;Diekhof et al, 2011). PFC regions have been proposed to generate high-level expectations (e.g., task instructions, or goals) about perceptual stimuli (e.g., Bar, 2003;Summerfield et al, 2006;Trapp and Bar, 2015).…”

Section: Early Visual Cortex Contains Reliably Similar Information Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatially generalizable representations of facial expressions: Decoding across partial face samples

Greening

Mitchell

Smith

2018

Cortex

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A network of cortical and sub-cortical regions is known to be important in the processing of facial expression. However, to date no study has investigated whether representations of facial expressions present in this network permit generalization across independent samples of face information (e.g., eye region vs mouth region). We presented participants with partial face samples of five expression categories in a rapid event-related fMRI experiment. We reveal a network of face-sensitive regions that contain information about facial expression categories regardless of which part of the face is presented. We further reveal that the neural information present in a subset of these regions: dorsal prefrontal cortex (dPFC), superior temporal sulcus (STS), lateral occipital and ventral temporal cortex, and even early visual cortex, enables reliable generalization across independent visual inputs (faces depicting the 'eyes only' vs 'eyes removed'). Furthermore, classification performance was correlated to behavioral performance in STS and dPFC. Our results demonstrate that both higher (e.g., STS, dPFC) and lower level cortical regions contain information useful for facial expression decoding that go beyond the visual information presented, and implicate a key role for contextual mechanisms such as cortical feedback in facial expression perception under challenging conditions of visual occlusion.

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Section: Early Visual Cortex Contains Reliably Similar Information Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatially generalizable representations of facial expressions: Decoding across partial face samples

Greening

Mitchell

Smith

2018

Cortex

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“…The latter paper is particularly relevant in that the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex showed an overlapping area that related to both autonomic responding (heart rate variability, blood pressure was not reported upon) as well as affective evaluation. Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activation has been related to empathetic responses with greater activation related to less tendency for personal distress [56]; a finding related to the modulation of dorsomedial prefrontal activation when anticipatory set was used to modulate affect [57]. Notably though, some work has shown the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex to be related to greater cortisol response to stress [58]; while other work again suggests activation of this area to be related to lower sensitivity to fear and disgust [59].…”

Section: Central Factors In Essential Hypertensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Brain to Behavior: Hypertension's Modulation of Cognition and Affect

Jennings

Heim

2012

International Journal of Hypertension

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Accumulating evidence from animal models and human studies of essential hypertension suggest that brain regulation of the vasculature is impacted by the disease. Human neuroimaging findings suggest that the brain may be an early target of the disease. This observation reinforces earlier research suggesting that psychological factors may be one of the many contributory factors to the initiation of the disease. Alternatively or in addition, initial blood pressure increases may impact cognitive and/or affective function. Evidence for an impact of blood pressure on the perception and experience of affect is reviewed vis-a-vis brain imaging findings suggesting that such involvement in hypertensive individuals is likely.

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“…That is, state-dependent changes of prefrontal-posterior EEG coherence may reveal relevant coupling and decoupling of cortical networks related to regulatory processes in the context of affective processing. The EEG findings are corroborated by data from a magnetic resonance imaging study suggesting that anticipatory mental imagery of a mildly fearful facial emotional expression proactively altered the subjective experience of highly fearful faces by state-dependent topdown regulatory influences of the prefrontal cortex on the temporoparietal cortex (Diekhof et al, 2011).…”

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confidence: 54%

State-dependent changes of prefrontal–posterior coupling in the context of affective processing: Susceptibility to humor

Papousek

Reiser

Weiss

et al. 2012

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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The aim of the present study was to examine whether interindividual differences in the coupling or decoupling of prefrontal and posterior cortices during the exposure to social-emotional information may predict an individual's positive emotional responsiveness. Susceptibility to humor was assessed in a behavioral paradigm several weeks after the EEG recordings. State-dependent changes of prefrontalposterior EEG beta coherence were recorded during stimulation with other people's auditory expressions of cheerfulness and sadness. Greater decreases of coherence during the stimulation with positive affect expressions prospectively predicted greater positive emotional responsiveness, indicated by higher amusement ratings in response to cartoons and higher scores in a questionnaire measure of exhilarability. Greater increases of coherence during the stimulation with negative affect expressions did not predict perceived funniness but were related to shorter response latencies to the amusement ratings. The results further support the notion that a more loose prefrontal-posterior coupling may be related to loosening of control of the prefrontal cortex over incoming emotional information and, thus, to a propensity to deeper emotional involvement and a greater impact of perceptual input, whereas increased prefrontal-posterior coupling may be related to strong control and the propensity to protect oneself from becoming emotionally affected.

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The power of imagination — How anticipatory mental imagery alters perceptual processing of fearful facial expressions

Cited by 37 publications

References 121 publications

Spatially generalizable representations of facial expressions: Decoding across partial face samples

Spatially generalizable representations of facial expressions: Decoding across partial face samples

From Brain to Behavior: Hypertension's Modulation of Cognition and Affect

State-dependent changes of prefrontal–posterior coupling in the context of affective processing: Susceptibility to humor

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