Functionally dissociated aspects in anterior and posterior electrocortical processing of facial threat

Abstract

The angry facial expression is an important socially threatening stimulus argued to have evolved to regulate social hierarchies. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERP) were used to investigate the involvement and temporal dynamics of the frontal and parietal regions in the processing of angry facial expressions. Angry, happy and neutral faces were shown to eighteen healthy right-handed volunteers in a passive viewing task. Stimulus-locked ERPs were recorded from the frontal and parietal scalp sites. The P200, N300 and early contingent negativity variation (eCNV) components of the electric brain potentials were investigated. Analyses revealed statistical significant reductions in P200 amplitudes for the angry facial expression on both frontal and parietal electrode sites. Furthermore, apart from being strongly associated with the anterior P200, the N300 showed to be more negative for the angry facial expression in the anterior regions also. Finally, the eCNV was more pronounced over the parietal sites for the angry facial expressions. The present study demonstrated specific electrocortical correlates underlying the processing of angry facial expressions in the anterior and posterior brain sectors. The P200 is argued to indicate valence tagging by a fast and early detection mechanism. The lowered N300 with an anterior distribution for the angry facial expressions indicates more elaborate evaluation of stimulus relevance. The fact that the P200 and the N300 are highly correlated suggests that they reflect different stages of the same anterior evaluation mechanism. The more pronounced posterior eCNV suggests sustained attention to socially threatening information. ᮊ

The appraisal of facial beauty is rapid but not mandatory

“…Further supporting evidence comes from studies reporting early ERP effects for emotional dimensions other than attractiveness (e.g., Pizzagalli et al, 1999). Extending these previous findings, the present study showed that the attractiveness dimension can have differential effects on brain activity at least as early as other emotional or affective stimulus dimensions, such as emotional facial expressions (Schupp, Öhman, et al, 2004;Schutter et al, 2004), emotional connotations of written words (Kissler, Herbert, Peyk, & Junghöfer, 2007), or affective content of pictures (Schupp et al, 2003a(Schupp et al, , 2003b. In this respect, our findings are in line with our earlier study revealing an ERP effect around 250 msec poststimulus (Werheid et al, 2007), notwithstanding the differences in timing and scalp distributions of the early attractiveness effects in both experiments, which may have been due to differences in the variability and number of the faces employed or in task demands (attractiveness rating vs. binary classification).…”

“…Although these findings were the first to demonstrate attractivenessrelated ERP effects prior to the LPC, they were in line with several previous studies on emotional face processing that had also revealed ERP effects prior to the LPC. For example, threatening facial expressions compared with neutral ones evoked posterior negativities at similar latencies between 200 and 320 msec after stimulus presentation (Balconi & Pozzoli, 2003;Schupp, Öhman, et al, 2004;Schutter et al, 2004). Öhman and Mineka (2001) interpreted these findings as the facilitation of automatic processing of fear-inducing stimuli by a "fear system" that enables rapid flight reactions, and thereby subserves survival.…”

“…The portraits were presented on a comemotional stimuli, including affectively connotated words (Fischler & Bradley, 2006;Schacht & Sommer, 2008), scenic pictures (Cuthbert, Schupp, Bradley, Birbaumer, & Lang, 2000;, and faces with emotional expressions (e.g., Schupp, Öhman, et al, 2004;Schutter, de Haan, & van Honk, 2004;Werheid, Alpay, Jentzsch, & Sommer, 2005).…”

Pictorial Cognitive Task Resolution and Dynamics of Event-Related Potentials

“…The results of Rossignol et al 42 -N300 is enhanced in amplitude for fearful stimuli, and Schutter el al. 46 -N300 is more negative for the angry facial expression, are not in confl ict with previous fi ndings, either.…”

Emotional face processing and attention performance in three domains: Neurophysiological mechanisms and moderating effects of trait anxiety

“…Emotional information and states are thought to bias the competition for cognitive control and processing resources measured by N200. For example, N200 amplitudes are greater following fearful, sad, and angry compared to neutral facial expressions (Campanella et al, 2002;Schutter et al, 2004) and other frontally-generated components, such as those related to error monitoring, are enhanced among individuals showing high negative affectivity (Luu et al, 2000a,b). Most ERP studies of emotional faces, however, employ passive viewing and other tasks which are unlikely to recruit cognitive control.…”