Activation of the Right Inferior Frontal Cortex During Assessment of Facial Emotion

Abstract

We measured regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) using positron emission tomography (PET) to determine which brain regions are involved in the assessment of facial emotion. We asked right-handed normal subjects to assess the signalers' emotional state based on facial gestures and to assess the facial attractiveness, as well as to discriminate the background color of the facial stimuli, and compared the activity produced by each condition. The right inferior frontal cortex showed significant activation during the assessment of facial emotion in comparison with the other two tests. The activated area was located within a triangular area of the inferior frontal cortex in the right cerebral hemisphere. These results, together with those of previous imaging and clinical studies, suggest that the right inferior frontal cortex processes emotional communicative signals that could be visual or auditory and that there is a hemispheric asymmetry in the inferior frontal cortex in relation to the processing of emotional communicative signals.

A modulatory role for facial expressions in prosopagnosia

“…More specifically, prosopagnosic patients show a failure to process the facial configuration, but, surprisingly, that ability returns when the face displays an emotional expression. These findings are consistent with evidence for a modulating role of facial expressions on visual processes in normal observers (3)(4)(5)(6). Now this modulatory role of facial expressions is reported for prosopagnosic patients and it is observed at the level at which the facial configuration is processed.…”

A Compensatory Mirror Cortical Mechanism for Facial Affect Processing in Schizophrenia

“…In our tasks, we wanted to emphasize the use-in WM-of information relevant for facial affect processing, because the known WM deficits in schizophrenic patients (Jeste et al 1996) might enhance related compensatory activity under conditions of correct performance. We thus expected to see abnormal activity in areas involved in resonance or mirroring phenomena rather than in sensory areas related to instant (i.e., perceptual, non-mnemonic) discrimination of facial features such as the fusiform gyrus (Halgren et al 2000) or the superior temporal sulcus or inferior frontal cortex (Nakamura et al 1999;Haxby et al 2000;Allison et al 2000), which are the focus of other studies. A functional dissociation between areas involved in facial information processing has been suggested before when memory-encoding is involved (Decety et al 1997).…”

“…Patients with schizophrenia exhibit a number of sensory and perceptual processing deficits (Braff et al 1995;Nuechterlein and Dawson 1984) likely contrib-uting to prefrontal-based perception-action cycle abnormalities. Among those, deficits specifically related to facial affect discrimination may involve cerebral sensory systems such as the superior temporal sulcus, the fusiform gyrus, and the inferior frontal cortex, as some studies indicate (Hariri et al 1999;Nakamura et al 1999;Haxby et al 2000;Allison et al 2000). Yet the specific association of increased mirror-like representational mechanisms described in our patients with cues of obvious social value stresses the relationship between prefrontal deficits and poor social adaptation in schizophrenia.…”

Error monitoring in the hemispheres: the effect of lateralized feedback on lexical decision

“…It might be argued, however, that the apparent RH advantage in responding to feedback is due to a superior ability to process faces or facial emotions (Adolphs, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1996;Nakamura et al, 1999). Experiment 2 uses neutral colored squares instead of faces to address this issue.…”