Distinct frontal and amygdala correlates of change detection for facial identity and expression

Abstract

Recruitment of ‘top-down’ frontal attentional mechanisms is held to support detection of changes in task-relevant stimuli. Fluctuations in intrinsic frontal activity have been shown to impact task performance more generally. Meanwhile, the amygdala has been implicated in ‘bottom-up’ attentional capture by threat. Here, 22 adult human participants took part in a functional magnetic resonance change detection study aimed at investigating the correlates of successful (vs failed) detection of changes in facial identity vs expression. For identity changes, we expected prefrontal recruitment to differentiate ‘hit’ from ‘miss’ trials, in line with previous reports. Meanwhile, we postulated that a different mechanism would support detection of emotionally salient changes. Specifically, elevated amygdala activation was predicted to be associated with successful detection of threat-related changes in expression, over-riding the influence of fluctuations in top-down attention. Our findings revealed that fusiform activity tracked change detection across conditions. Ventrolateral prefrontal cortical activity was uniquely linked to detection of changes in identity not expression, and amygdala activity to detection of changes from neutral to fearful expressions. These results are consistent with distinct mechanisms supporting detection of changes in face identity vs expression, the former potentially reflecting top-down attention, the latter bottom-up attentional capture by stimulus emotional salience.

The priority of goal-relevant information and evolutionarily threatening information in early attention processing:Evidence from behavioral and ERP study

“…In other words, in the early stage of attention, evolutionarily threatening information captured attention faster than temporarily goal-relevant information. Previous research suggested evolutionarily threatening information can lead to the "bottom-up" capture of attention [52][53][54] . This result supported Theeuwes' Table 1.…”

The functional connectome in posttraumatic stress disorder

“…While this “intrinsic connectivity” is different from pure resting-state connectivity previous studies have shown that it exhibits a very similar functional connectivity pattern reflecting the inherent connectivity of the large-scale networks in the brain ( Korgaonkar et al, 2014 ; Ball et al, 2017 ). Movement outliers were identified as volumes where movement of the head from one volume to the next was 0.3 mm or greater or had a difference in scaled signal intensity greater than 10, as well as the two volumes before and one after ( Achaibou et al, 2016 ; Goldstein-Piekarski et al, 2018 ; Power et al, 2012 ; Power et al, 2014 ; Siegel et al, 2014 ). The Volterra expansion of twenty-four realignment parameters was also modelled for each task ( Friston et al, 1996 ).…”

Using Smiles, Frowns, and Gaze to Attribute Conscious States to Others: Testing Part of the Attention Schema Theory

“…The emotional expression of faces is also obviously an important feature with special representation in the brain [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. We do not argue that any one cue is unimportant or does not have special neuronal representation.…”

“…Convincing evidence suggests that the brain is especially well tuned to detect the gaze of others [17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. But the brain is also well tuned to detect facial expression [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41], and the processing of gaze and facial expression may interact [36,42,43]. In the attention schema hypothesis, the gaze cue should not dominate.…”