Neural correlates of infants' visual responsiveness to facial expressions of emotion

Abstract

An extensive literature documents the infant's ability to recognize and discriminate a variety of facial expressions of emotion. However, little is known about the neural bases of this ability. To examine the neural processes that may underlie infants' responses to facial expressions, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while 7-month-olds watched pictures of a happy face and a fearful face (Experiment 1) or an angry face and a fearful face (Experiment 2). In both experiments an early positive component, a middlelatency negative component and a later positive component were elicited. However, only when the infants saw the happy and fearful faces did the components differ for the two expressions. These results are discussed in the context of the neurobiological processes involved in perceiving facial expressions. 0 1996 John Wiley & sons. Inc.

Distinct differences in the pattern of hemodynamic response to happy and angry facial expressions in infants — A near-infrared spectroscopic study

“…ERP studies in infants have demonstrated different patterns of ERP responses to happy and fearful faces in 7-month-olds (Nelson and de Haan, 1996;Leppänen et al, 2007). In addition, it was reported that angry faces elicited a larger Nc component than fearful faces, possibly related to increased attention to threat-relevant signals, in 7-month- Fig.…”

“…Nelson and de Haan (1996) reported that different ERP components were evoked by happy and fearful facial expressions. That is, both early and late positive components were observed in response to happy faces, whereas only a negative component (Nc) was identified for fearful faces.…”

“…Although some studies demonstrated different patterns of ERP responses in response to different facial expressions (Nelson and de Haan, 1996;Leppänen et al, 2007;Kobiella et al, 2008;Hoehl and Striano, 2008), ERP techniques have relatively poor spatial resolution. Thus, neuroimaging methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) are needed to explore functional brain activity for the processing of facial expressions in infants.…”

Impaired Face Processing in Autism: Fact or Artifact?

“…The ERPs of infants as young as 6 months of age show a relatively late and small N170 component in response to face images (de Haan, Pascalis, & Johnson, 2002;Nelson & de Haan, 1996) that is not affected by inversion as in older infants and adult subjects (de Haan et al, 2002). They show instead later ERP differences ($400 ms after stimulus onset) between not only upright and inverted faces (de Haan et al, 2002), but also between emotional expressions (e.g.…”

“…They show instead later ERP differences ($400 ms after stimulus onset) between not only upright and inverted faces (de Haan et al, 2002), but also between emotional expressions (e.g. happy vs. fear; Nelson & de Haan, 1996) and between their mothers' and strangers' faces (de Haan & Nelson, 1997). ERP studies with older children have shown that the N170 responses to faces do not reach full maturity until adulthood, decreasing in amplitude, and occurring at earlier latencies throughout the child and adolescent years (Taylor, Batty, & Itier, 2004;Taylor, McCarthy, Saliba, & Degiovanni, 1999).…”