Gender differences in subliminal affective face priming: A high-density ERP study

Abstract

Background Subliminal affective priming effects (SAPEs) refer to the phenomenon by which the presentation of an affective prime stimulus influences the subsequent affective evaluation of a target stimulus. Previous studies have shown that behavioural performance is affected more by unconsciously processed stimuli than by consciously processed stimuli. However, the impact of SAPEs on the face-specific N170 component is unclear. In the current study, we investigated how subliminal processing of fearful faces affected the N170 for subsequent supraliminal target faces using event-related potentials (ERPs).Methods We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to study how SAEPs for fearful faces affect the N170 for subsequent supraliminal target faces. Japanese adults (n=51, 24 females) participated in this study. Subliminal prime faces (neutral or fearful) were presented for 17 ms, followed by a backward mask for 283 ms and target faces for 800 ms (neutral, emotionally ambiguous-fearful, or fearful). ERPs (128-ch) were recorded while participants judged the expression of target faces as neutral or fearful.Results Behavioral data revealed that participants judged target faces as more fearful in the fearful face prime condition compared with the neutral prime condition, regardless of emotional expression. Interestingly, we found gender-related differences in N170 amplitude; only female participants exhibited enhanced N170 amplitude for neutral faces primed by fearful faces. Therefore, a noticeable gender difference exists in the neural processing of subliminally perceived facial emotions.Conclusions Our ERP results suggest the existence of a gender difference in target-face processing preceded by subliminally presented face stimuli in the right occipito-temporal regions.

Asynchronous neural oscillations associated with subliminal affective face priming in autism spectrum disorder

“…Consistent with our previous study [7], the behavioral data revealed no priming or group effects. Emotional recognition in ASD is currently controversial, with mixed evidence regarding atypical and typical responses in ASD [24].…”

“…We used neutral and fearful expressions displayed by four Japanese actors (two men and two women) as prime-face stimuli, following our previous study [7]. Target-face stimuli including neutral and fearful expressions displayed by another four Japanese actors were used as prime-face stimuli.…”

“…We performed ERP analysis to examine the N170 components. Regions of interest (ROIs) were adopted from our previous study of SAPEs [7] (i.e. left ROI = 58 [T5], 57, 64, 65, right ROI = 96 [T6], 90, 95, 100).…”

“…nonconsciously) presented emotional face stimuli affect several event-related potential (ERP) components including the N170 [5,6]. We recently confirmed the presence of subliminal affective priming effects (SAPEs) with a sex difference, which exhibited N170 modulation for supraliminal target faces followed by subliminal fearful faces [7]. Our previous findings also suggested that nonconsciously presented fearful faces affected the processing of subsequent supraliminal target faces in the right occipitotemporal region, which is in line with previously reported current source density analyses of the fusiform face area (FFA) and superior temporal sulcus (STS) [8,9].…”

“…Thus, we considered that analyses of both exogenous responses (stimulus-locking evoked potentials) and endogenous responses (event-related induced responses) were useful for understanding the neural basis of atypical emotional cognition in ASD. Therefore, in the current study, we aimed to demonstrate the aberrant processing of subliminal emotional face information in adults with ASD by employing conventional ERP and ITPC analyses using our previously reported SAPE paradigm [7]. We hypothesized that individuals with ASD would show atypical or absent SAPEs for either ERP responses (N170 components) or induced neural activities (ITPC) caused by abnormal neural face processing.…”