The effect of emotionally valenced eye region images on visuocortical processing of surprised faces

Abstract

In this study, we presented pictorial representations of happy, neutral, and fearful expressions projected in the eye regions to determine whether the eye region alone is sufficient to produce a context effect. Participants were asked to judge the valence of surprised faces that had been preceded by a picture of an eye region. Behavioral results showed that affective ratings of surprised faces were context dependent. Prime-related ERPs with presentation of happy eyes elicited a larger P1 than those for neutral and fearful eyes, likely due to the recognition advantage provided by a happy expression. Target-related ERPs showed that surprised faces in the context of fearful and happy eyes elicited dramatically larger C1 than those in the neutral context, which reflected the modulation by predictions during the earliest stages of face processing. There were larger N170 with neutral and fearful eye contexts compared to the happy context, suggesting faces were being integrated with contextual threat information. The P3 component exhibited enhanced brain activity in response to faces preceded by happy and fearful eyes compared with neutral eyes, indicating motivated attention processing may be involved at this stage. Altogether, these results indicate for the first time that the influence of isolated eye regions on the perception of surprised faces involves preferential processing at the early stages and elaborate processing at the late stages. Moreover, higher cognitive processes such as predictions and attention can modulate face processing from the earliest stages in a top-down manner.

Modulation of face- and emotion-selective ERPs by the three most common types of face image manipulations

“…no hair), though this was necessary to avoid changing the size of the core facial features, which are known to strongly impact ERP amplitudes (e.g. eyes, see Li et al , 2018). Moreover, tiredness or habituation effects might be involved, as participants completed two other face experiments directly preceding the present study.…”

“…As an example, for fearful faces, the eyes constitutea crucial region for recognising the emotional expression (e.g. see Adolphs, 2008; Wegrzyn et al , 2015), as well as for modulating ERP responses (Li et al , 2018).…”

The spatial frequency spectrum of fearful faces modulates early and mid‐latency ERPs but not the N170

“…With respect to the effect of emotional faces on ERPs, several components are of interest: The P1 component peaks between 80 and 120 ms after stimulus presentation, is influenced by endogenous and exogenous spatial attention and related to early processes of stimulus detection (Clark & Hillyard, 1996; Eimer, van Velzen, & Driver, 2002; Herrmann & Knight, 2001; Hillyard & Anllo‐Vento, 1998). Regarding the contribution of fearful expressions, mixed findings on P1 modulations are reported: While some studies observed larger P1 amplitudes for fearful faces (e.g., see Li, Li, Wang, Zhu, & Luo, 2018; Santos, Iglesias, Olivares, & Young, 2008; Smith, Weinberg, Moran, & Hajcak, 2013), others did not find such an effect (e.g., see Acunzo, MacKenzie, & van Rossum, 2019; Mavratzakis, Herbert, & Walla, 2016; Wieser, Gerdes, Greiner, Reicherts, & Pauli, 2012). Recent studies suggest that low‐level features contribute strongly to P1 effects (Schindler, Bruchmann, Gathmann, Moeck, & Straube, 2019), indicating that physical differences account at least partly for the diversity of these results.…”

The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study

“…Furthermore, one study found that participants made more cooperative decisions after supraliminal eye contact than they did with no eye contact, and the effect only existed for the prosocial but not for the pro-self [23]. To date, research using eye stimuli alone to study face processing is still in an initial stage [24]. Additionally, emotions conveyed by eye region information become more important and a necessary way for people to read others’ mind when expressions of the others’ whole face is not available, such as in medical situations or hijacking.…”