Huis In 't Veld Elisabeth M J, van Boxtel Geert J M, de Gelder Beatrice
Brain and Emotion Laboratory, Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University Tilburg, Netherlands.
Department of Cognitive Neuropsychology, Tilburg University Tilburg, Netherlands.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2014 Sep 23;8:330. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00330. eCollection 2014.
Research into the expression and perception of emotions has mostly focused on facial expressions. Recently, body postures have become increasingly important in research, but knowledge on muscle activity during the perception or expression of emotion is lacking. The current study continues the development of a Body Action Coding System (BACS), which was initiated in a previous study, and described the involvement of muscles in the neck, shoulders and arms during expression of fear and anger. The current study expands the BACS by assessing the activity patterns of three additional muscles. Surface electromyography of muscles in the neck (upper trapezius descendens), forearms (extensor carpi ulnaris), lower back (erector spinae longissimus) and calves (peroneus longus) were measured during active expression and passive viewing of fearful and angry body expressions. The muscles in the forearm were strongly active for anger expression and to a lesser extent for fear expression. In contrast, muscles in the calves were recruited slightly more for fearful expressions. It was also found that muscles automatically responded to the perception of emotion, without any overt movement. The observer's forearms responded to the perception of fear, while the muscles used for leaning backwards were activated when faced with an angry adversary. Lastly, the calf responded immediately when a fearful person was seen, but responded slower to anger. There is increasing interest in developing systems that are able to create or recognize emotional body language for the development of avatars, robots, and online environments. To that end, multiple coding systems have been developed that can either interpret or create bodily expressions based on static postures, motion capture data or videos. However, the BACS is the first coding system based on muscle activity.
对情绪表达和感知的研究大多集中在面部表情上。最近，身体姿势在研究中变得越来越重要，但在情绪感知或表达过程中的肌肉活动方面仍缺乏相关知识。当前的研究延续了先前一项研究中启动的身体动作编码系统（BACS）的开发，并描述了在恐惧和愤怒表达过程中颈部、肩部和手臂肌肉的参与情况。当前的研究通过评估另外三块肌肉的活动模式来扩展BACS。在主动表达和被动观看恐惧和愤怒的身体表情过程中，测量了颈部（斜方肌下束）、前臂（尺侧腕伸肌）、下背部（竖脊肌最长肌）和小腿（腓骨长肌）肌肉的表面肌电图。前臂肌肉在愤怒表达时强烈活动，在恐惧表达时活动程度较小。相比之下，小腿肌肉在恐惧表情时的募集略多一些。研究还发现，肌肉会自动对情绪感知做出反应，无需任何明显动作。观察者的前臂对恐惧感知有反应，而面对愤怒对手时，用于向后倾斜的肌肉会被激活。最后，当看到一个恐惧的人时，小腿会立即做出反应，但对愤怒的反应较慢。人们对开发能够创建或识别用于虚拟角色、机器人和在线环境的情绪肢体语言的系统越来越感兴趣。为此，已经开发了多种编码系统，这些系统可以根据静态姿势、动作捕捉数据或视频来解释或创建身体表情。然而，BACS是第一个基于肌肉活动的编码系统。
