Effects of Intensity of Facial Expressions on Amygdalar Activation Independently of Valence

Lin, Huiyan; Mueller-Bardorff, Miriam; Mothes-Lasch, Martin; Buff, Christine; Brinkmann, Leonie; Miltner, Wolfgang H. R.; Straube, Thomas

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00646

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 75 publications

(135 reference statements)

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“…In addition, the posterior STS and supramarginal gyrus have been reported to be involved in the integration of audio-visual information and to respond to multiple types of social signals 74,75 . The results of the present study extend the findings of Lin and colleagues 5 and indicate arousal-driven modulation of the posterior STS by facial and vocal expressions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…In line with these studies, we find a significant positive relationship between amygdalar activation and stimulus arousal, and thus also a positive relationship between amygdalar activation and emotional intensity of facial expressions. Regarding facial expressions, several other studies found effects of emotional intensity on amygdalar responding 5,29,35 , which however varied. Interestingly, Gerber and colleagues 35 observed inverse intensity effects, that is, enhanced amygdalar responding www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ for weak, possibly ambiguous expressions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even though there are many studies investigating whether amygdalar responses to vocal and facial expressions reflect modulation by stimulus valence or stimulus arousal, findings have been inconsistent so far [11][12][13][14] . Unfortunately, the majority of affective face and voice processing studies neither provide orthogonal manipulations of the two factors, nor include rating data on stimulus valence and arousal (but see e.g., Kim et al 19 ; Lin et al 5 , for exceptions). In contrast to previous research, the present study provided highly arousing negative and positive expressions and systematically varied stimulus arousal and emotional intensity across emotional valence categories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Besides the amygdala, our results provide evidence for domain-general, arousal-driven effects in several multimodal brain regions including the posterior STS, possibly indicating that these regions play an important role in the processing of stimulus arousal across visual and auditory modalities. A recent study by Lin and colleagues (2016) 5 showed that stimulus arousal strongly impacts activation of the posterior STS in response to facial expressions. Several researchers proposed that the posterior STS is involved in the representation of facial information, particularly the representation of emotional expressions 67,68 , and demonstrated coupling with other face processing areas such as the fusiform gyrus 69,70 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been suggested that the amygdala classifies sensory input according to its emotional and motivational relevance 1,2 and modulates ongoing sensory processing leading to enhanced representations of emotionally relevant stimuli 3,4 . Social signals, such as emotional vocal and facial expressions, typically represent environmental aspects of high social and personal relevance (e.g., indicating other persons' intentions or pointing towards relevant environmental changes) and high intense expressions are associated with higher arousal ratings as compared to low intense expressions 5 . It has been shown that the amygdala responds to both emotional vocal [6][7][8][9] and facial expressions 10 .…”

Section: Stimulus Arousal Drives Amygdalar Responses To Emotional Expmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stimulus arousal drives amygdalar responses to emotional expressions across sensory modalities

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function of stimulus arousal irrespective of stimulus valence by using positive and negative expressions of varying emotional intensity 5. Here, intensity refers to the entirety of aspects, constitutive for the emotional experience as a whole 33,34 and is highly correlated with emotional arousal 5. Interestingly, some other studies also report modulation by expression intensity (and corresponding stimulus arousal), but report inverse intensity effects (that is, enhanced amygdalar activation to low intense/low arousing expressions 35 (see discussion below). With regard to affective voice processing, findings are also mixed. Using verbal and non-verbal vocalizations some studies show valence specific (e.g., responding to anger, fear, disgust but not happy vocalizations) amygdalar responses 36,37 , while others indicate valence-independent enhancements reflecting stimulus arousal 38,39 or combined effects of stimulus valence and stimulus arousal 5. In general, many studies only provide a dichotomous experimental manipulation (e.g., neutral versus negative expressions) and do therefore not provide information regarding separate contributions of stimulus valence and stimulus arousal 40-42. With respect to potential parallels between the processing of emotional vocalizations and facial expressions, it remains uncertain, whether the amygdala responds in a domain-general way across visual and auditory modalities. Recent reviews suggest that the amygdala is more important in affective face processing, as compared to the processing of emotional vocalizations 15,16. On the other hand, a large number of imaging studies demonstrate enhanced amygdalar activation to emotional signals from the auditory compared to the visual domain 6,8,40,42,43. In a similar vein, lesion studies also report impaired processing of emotional prosody in amygdala-lesioned patients 37,44-47. Finally, there are some bimodal studies, which suggest analogous response patterns irrespective of the visual and auditory domains 36,48,49. Aubé and colleagues (2015) 49 , for instance, demonstrate enhanced amygdalar activation in response to fear-related facial expressions, vocalizations and music plays, thus indicating parallels in the processing of emotional signals from different modalities 50. Taken together, previous studies indicate that the amygdala responds to emotional signals from visual and auditory channels, although it is uncertain whether asymmetries in affective voice and face processing exist. Several aspects might be relevant with regard to the heterogeneous findings of previous research. In particular, many of the above-mentioned studies neither assessed stimulus valence/arousal, nor controlled for comparable arousal levels across valence categories 22,36,49-51. Positively-valenced facial expressions and voices may tend to be perceived as less arousing since they are frequently encountered in everyday life 28,52. Importantly, several of the above-mentioned studies might have failed to create highly arousing positive signals-especially those wh...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%