The Establishment of Pseudorandom Ecological Microexpression Recognition Test (PREMERT) and Its Relevant Resting-State Brain Activity

Abstract

The EMERT (ecological microexpression recognition test) by Zhang et al. (2017) used between-subjects Latin square block design for backgrounds; therefore, participants could not get comparable scores. The current study used within-subject pseudorandom design for backgrounds to improve EMERT to PREMERT (pseudorandom EMERT) and used eyes-closed and eyes-open resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to detect relevant brain activity of PREMERT for the first time. The results showed (1) two new recapitulative indexes of PREMERT were adopted, such as microexpression M and microexpression SD. Using pseudorandom design, the participants could effectively identify almost all the microexpressions, and each microexpression type had significant background effect. The PREMERT had good split-half reliability, parallelforms reliability, criterion validity, and ecological validity. Therefore, it could stably and efficiently detect the participants' microexpression recognition abilities. Because of its pseudorandom design, all participants did the same test; their scores could be compared with each other. (2) amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF; 0.01-0.1 Hz) in both eyes-closed and eyes-open resting states and ALFF difference could predict microexpression M, and the ALFF difference was less predictive. The relevant resting-state brain areas of microexpression M were some frontal lobes, insula, cingulate cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, fusiform gyrus, parietal lobe, caudate nucleus, precuneus, thalamus, putamen, temporal lobe, and cerebellum. (3) ALFFs in both eyes-closed and eyes-open resting states and ALFF difference could predict microexpression SD, and the ALFF difference was more predictive. The relevant restingstate brain areas of microexpression SD were some frontal lobes, central anterior gyrus, supplementary motor area, insula, hippocampus, amygdala, cuneus, occipital lobe, fusiform gyrus, parietal lobe, caudate nucleus, pallidum, putamen, thalamus, temporal lobe, and cerebellum. (4) There were many similar relevant resting-state brain areas, such as brain areas of expression recognition, microexpressions consciousness and attention, and the change from expression backgrounds to microexpression, and some different relevant resting-state brain areas, such as precuneus, insula, and pallidum, between microexpression M and SD. The ALFF difference was more sensitive to PREMERT fluctuations.

Oxytocin Impairs the Recognition of Micro-Expressions of Surprise and Disgust

“…This further suggests that the specific effects of oxytocin on the recognition of surprised and disgusted micro-expressions may be caused by the effects of oxytocin on insula and amygdala. In fact, previous research on micro-expressions has already found that the recognition accuracy of micro-expressions could be predicted by the resting-state brain activities of insula and amygdala ( Zhang et al, 2020a ). Previous studies also found that oxytocin can affect the facial mimicry process ( Korb et al, 2016 ; Pavarini et al, 2019 ) and the facial mimicry was found to exert its effect on emotion processing through its effect on the neural responses of insula and amygdala (e.g., Lee et al, 2006 ; Rymarczyk et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Specifically, we employed a laboratory-based paradigm of Japanese and Caucasian Brief Affect Recognition Test (JACBART) to present these micro-expressions ( Matsumoto et al, 2000 ). This well-accepted paradigm presents the micro-expressions in a standardized way which utilizes apparent movement to present the facial dynamics and it can efficiently control the key factors that may moderate the recognition of micro-expressions (e.g., the head movement of the target, the emotion context, the duration and the intensity of micro-expressions; e.g., Matsumoto et al, 2000 ; Ekman, 2009 ; Endres and Laidlaw, 2009 ; Matsumoto and Hwang, 2011 ; Hurley et al, 2014 ; Svetieva and Frank, 2016 ; Demetrioff et al, 2017 ; Felisberti, 2018 ; Zeng et al, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2020a ). 4 In addition, given that previous studies indicate that the duration of micro-expressions can significantly affect the recognition accuracy of micro-expressions (e.g., Matsumoto et al, 2000 ; Shen et al, 2012 ; Wu et al, 2016 ; Zeng et al, 2018 ; Xie et al, 2019 ), we employed three different settings of duration (i.e., 50, 150, and 333 ms) to test our hypothesis in Study 1.…”

“…Therefore, in the present research, we utilized a double-blind, placebo-controlled, mixed-model experimental design to investigate the effects of intranasal oxytocin administration on the recognition of micro-expressions. More specifically, considering previous studies have suggested that oxytocin may have an emotion-specific enhancement effect for the recognition of macro-expressions (e.g., Di Simplicio et al, 2009 ; Marsh et al, 2010 ; Leknes et al, 2012 ; Shahrestani et al, 2013 ; Fang et al, 2014 ; Leppanen et al, 2017 ; Shin et al, 2018 ; Schwaiger et al, 2019 ), in the present research, in three behavioral studies we investigated whether intranasal oxytocin has differential effects on the recognition of different categories of micro-expressions (i.e., micro-expressions of the six basic emotions, including sadness, surprise, anger, disgust, fear, and happiness; e.g., Matsumoto and Hwang, 2011 ; Shen et al, 2012 ; Hurley et al, 2014 ; Svetieva and Frank, 2016 ; Wu et al, 2016 ; Demetrioff et al, 2017 ; Zeng et al, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2020a ). Specifically, in Study 1 and 2, we tested the effects of oxytocin on the recognition of standardized intense (Study 1) and subtle (Study 2) micro-expressions.…”

“…Diverse brain areas (e.g., frontal lobes, insula, precuneus, amygdala, cingulate cortex, etc.) are also found to be involved in the recognition of micro-expressions ( Zhang et al, 2020a , b ). Most importantly, some recent evidence suggests that there are fundamental differences in the neuropsychological basis for the recognition of micro-expressions and macro-expressions.…”

The establishment of the general microexpression recognition ability and its relevant brain activity

“…It only used the neutral expressions backgrounds before and after a brief microexpression to hide it but did not examine the influence of backgrounds with emotional expressions. The real microexpressions are embedded in the The picture of the experiment procedure from Zhang et al (2020b). These images are licensed by the copyright owners, Tottenham et al (2009) and Zhang et al (2020b).…”