Modulation of Alpha Oscillations in the Human EEG with Facial Preference

Abstract

Facial preference that results from the processing of facial information plays an important role in social interactions as well as the selection of a mate, friend, candidate, or favorite actor. However, it still remains elusive which brain regions are implicated in the neural mechanisms underlying facial preference, and how neural activities in these regions are modulated during the formation of facial preference. In the present study, we investigated the modulation of electroencephalography (EEG) oscillatory power with facial preference. For the reliable assessments of facial preference, we designed a series of passive viewing and active choice tasks. In the former task, twenty-four face stimuli were passively viewed by participants for multiple times in random order. In the latter task, the same stimuli were then evaluated by participants for their facial preference judgments. In both tasks, significant differences between the preferred and non-preferred faces groups were found in alpha band power (8–13 Hz) but not in other frequency bands. The preferred faces generated more decreases in alpha power. During the passive viewing task, significant differences in alpha power between the preferred and non-preferred face groups were observed at the left frontal regions in the early (0.15–0.4 s) period during the 1-s presentation. By contrast, during the active choice task when participants consecutively watched the first and second face for 1 s and then selected the preferred one, an alpha power difference was found for the late (0.65–0.8 s) period over the whole brain during the first face presentation and over the posterior regions during the second face presentation. These results demonstrate that the modulation of alpha activity by facial preference is a top-down process, which requires additional cognitive resources to facilitate information processing of the preferred faces that capture more visual attention than the non-preferred faces.

EEG Beta Oscillations in the Temporoparietal Area Related to the Accuracy in Estimating Others' Preference

“…However, not every aspect of the preference prediction process through thin-slicing could be represented in scalp EEG. Many previous studies reported that frontal areas such as mPFC are primarily involved in the self-referential processing (Frith and Frith, 1999 , 2003 ; Vogeley et al, 2001 ; Kampe et al, 2003 ; Platek et al, 2004 ; Boksem and Smidts, 2015 ; Jack and Schyns, 2015 ; Kang et al, 2015 ), which was not present in the EEG data of this study. Nevertheless, our results may suggest importance of the self-referential information processing for individual performance of others' preference prediction.…”

“…EEG beta oscillations have been implicated in the prediction of one's preference over movie and musical tempo (Popova et al, 2014 ; Kang et al, 2015 ). Northoff et al, also suggested that self-referential information processing in the social domain was reflected in neural activity over the regions of mPFC, ACC, temporal pole and superior temporal sulci.…”

“…Northoff et al, also suggested that self-referential information processing in the social domain was reflected in neural activity over the regions of mPFC, ACC, temporal pole and superior temporal sulci. Specifically, while medial cortical areas play as a core system, lateral cortical areas are engaged in high-order information processing (Lachat et al, 2012 ; Kang et al, 2015 ). Therefore, right temporoparietal beta oscillations may be related to self-referential social information processing of individuals.…”

“…As to brain activity measurements, we use scalp electroencephalography (EEG) as it provides a higher temporal resolution than fMRI and thus is more suitable to examine time-varying brain patterns over a short period of thin-slicing. Previous studies revealed that social skills such as recognizing others' facial emotions are accompanied by increases in the magnitude of alpha oscillations in EEG (Popova et al, 2014 ; Kang et al, 2015 ). EEG beta oscillations have also been used for predicting one's preference on movie trailers or musical tempo (Bauer et al, 2015 ; Boksem and Smidts, 2015 ).…”

Gender Differences in Global Functional Connectivity During Facial Emotion Processing: A Visual MMN Study

“…The participants did not focus on the experiment tasks of the vMMN, so the alpha composition was activated during the unattended process. Moreover, the modulation of human EEG activity by facial preference was found in the alpha band power (8–13 Hz) but not in the other frequency bands (Kang et al, 2015 ). A study also showed differential alpha coherence hemispheric patterns in males and females during pleasant and unpleasant musical emotions (Flores-Gutiérrez et al, 2009 ).…”