Department of Psychology, College of Healthcare Sciences, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia.
Department of Psychology, College of Healthcare Sciences, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia.
Neuropsychologia. 2020 Jun;143:107490. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107490. Epub 2020 May 5.
Tears are a facial expression of emotion that readily elicit empathic responses from observers. It is currently unknown whether these empathic responses to tears are influenced by specific neural substrates. The EEG mu rhythm is one method of investigating the human mirror neuron system, purported to underlie the sharing of affective states and a facilitator of social cognition. The purpose of this research was to explore the mu response to tearful expressions of emotion. Sixty-eight participants viewed happy and sad faces, both with and without tears, in addition to a neutral control condition. Participants first completed an emotion discrimination task, and then an imitation condition where they were required to mimic the displayed expression. Mu enhancement was found in response to the discrimination task, whilst suppression was demonstrated in response to the imitation condition. Examination of the suppression scores revealed that greater suppression was observed in response to happy-tear and sad tear-free expressions. Planned contrasts exploring suppression to neutral faces revealed no significant differences between emotional and neutral conditions. The mu response to neutral expressions resembled that of the happy-tear and the sad tear-free conditions, lending support to the idea that ambiguous emotional expressions require greater sensorimotor engagement. This study provides preliminary evidence for the role of the mirror neuron system in discerning tearful expressions of emotion in the absence of context.
眼泪是一种情感的面部表达，很容易引起观察者的共鸣反应。目前还不清楚这些对眼泪的共鸣反应是否受到特定神经基质的影响。脑电图 mu 节律是研究人类镜像神经元系统的一种方法，被认为是情感状态共享的基础，也是社会认知的促进因素。本研究旨在探讨对流泪表情的 mu 反应。68 名参与者观看了有泪和无泪的快乐和悲伤的面孔，以及中性对照条件。参与者首先完成了情绪辨别任务，然后是模仿任务，要求他们模仿显示的表情。在辨别任务中发现了 mu 增强，而在模仿条件下则表现出抑制。对抑制分数的检查表明，对快乐流泪和悲伤无泪的表情抑制更为明显。对中性面孔的抑制差异进行的对比分析显示，情绪和中性条件之间没有显著差异。对中性表情的 mu 反应与快乐流泪和悲伤无泪的条件相似，这支持了这样一种观点，即模糊的情绪表达需要更大的感觉运动参与。这项研究为镜像神经元系统在没有背景的情况下辨别流泪的情感表达提供了初步证据。
