Karl Christian, Hewig Johannes, Osinsky Roman
a Department of Psychology I , Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg , Würzburg , Germany.
Soc Neurosci. 2016 Oct;11(5):531-44. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2015.1115776. Epub 2015 Nov 24.
There is broad evidence that contextual factors influence the processing of emotional facial expressions. Yet temporal-dynamic aspects, inter alia how face processing is influenced by the specific order of neutral and emotional facial expressions, have been largely neglected. To shed light on this topic, we recorded electroencephalogram from 168 healthy participants while they performed a gender-discrimination task with angry and neutral faces. Our event-related potential (ERP) analyses revealed a strong emotional modulation of the N170 component, indicating that the basic visual encoding and emotional analysis of a facial stimulus happen, at least partially, in parallel. While the N170 and the late positive potential (LPP; 400-600 ms) were only modestly affected by the sequence of preceding faces, we observed a strong influence of face sequences on the early posterior negativity (EPN; 200-300 ms). Finally, the differing response patterns of the EPN and LPP indicate that these two ERPs represent distinct processes during face analysis: while the former seems to represent the integration of contextual information in the perception of a current face, the latter appears to represent the net emotional interpretation of a current face.
有广泛的证据表明，情境因素会影响对面部表情的处理。然而，时间动态方面，尤其是面部处理如何受到中性和情绪化面部表情的特定顺序的影响，在很大程度上被忽视了。为了阐明这个问题，我们记录了168名健康参与者在执行愤怒和中性面孔的性别歧视任务时的脑电图。我们的事件相关电位（ERP）分析揭示了N170成分的强烈情绪调制，表明面部刺激的基本视觉编码和情绪分析至少部分是并行发生的。虽然N170和晚期正电位（LPP；400 - 600毫秒）仅受到先前面孔序列的适度影响，但我们观察到面孔序列对早期后负电位（EPN；200 - 300毫秒）有强烈影响。最后，EPN和LPP的不同反应模式表明，这两种ERP在面部分析过程中代表不同的过程：前者似乎代表在当前面孔感知中情境信息的整合，而后者似乎代表对当前面孔的净情绪解读。
