Recognizing Emotion from Facial Expressions: Psychological and Neurological Mechanisms

Abstract

Recognizing emotion from facial expressions draws on diverse psychological processes implemented in a large, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The sheer diversity of findings precludes any simple summary and argues against the isolation of only a few structures. Instead, it is becoming clear that recognizing facial emotion draws on multiple strategies subserved by a large array of different brain structures. This review will focus on those processes and structures whose role we understand best at present and will focus primarily on data from functional imaging and lesion studies. The review will not cover details of face identity processing or of facial emotion processing in psychiatric disorders.

Emotional facial activation induced by unconsciously perceived dynamic facial expressions

“…The weaker effect for the zygomaticus is consistent with studies that found less pronounced differentiations between positive and negative affect for the zygomaticus than the corrugator muscle (Larsen et al, 2003), while other publications report stronger effects for the zygomaticus (Moody & McIntosh, 2011). Since upper and lower face muscles are partly innervated by different brain regions (Adolphs, 2002), it would Unconscious Emotional Facial Activation 15 be worth investigating if these results indicate that reactivity of these muscles are mediated by different processes.…”

Facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease: A review and new hypotheses

“…The remainder frequently chose discrimination/matching tasks that require judging whether or not 2 faces express the same emotion (Table 2). This may reflect different stages in the FER processs 55. Although both involve intact perceptual information processes occurring relatively early after stimulus onset, identification requires additional knowledge yielded by a categorization process.…”

“…According to this theory, emotion recognition is facilitated by internally generated somatosensory representations triggered by the simulation of a perceived facial expression that partially activates the corresponding emotional state in the observer 55, 125, 126, 127. This is subtended by somatosensory‐related cortices and could be linked to facial mimicry, the tendency to replicate others' facial expressions 128, 129.…”

Visual Mismatch Negativity and Categorization

“…Facial emotions have a well-established categorical system (Ekman and Friesen, 1967; for a review see Adolphs, 2002); therefore, there is an increasing interest concerning whether changes of facial emotions are detected automatically. In other words, these studies investigated the possibility of vMMN to the appearance of infrequent (deviant) emotions within the sequence of frequent (standard) emotions.…”