Kirasirova Luisa, Maslova Olga, Pyatin Vasiliy
Department of Physiology, Samara State Medical University, Samara, Russia.
Department of Science, Eurasian Technological University, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2025 Feb 10;19:1523705. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1523705. eCollection 2025.
It is known from the literature that face perception of virtual agents affects the amplitude and latency of the ERP components. However, sensitivity of the N170 component to virtual agent facial emotions, and level of attention to facial emotional expressions were not investigated in the virtual reality environment by now, which was the aim of our study.
EEG recording, 2D and 3D visual testing of the neutral, happy and disgusted facial emotions of virtual agents were used. The protocol consisted of three sessions in the attentional condition of participants to each facial emotion (passive, active, and active to neutral facial emotional expression). The amplitudes of the N170 ERP were also reflected in the comparative analysis between 2D and VR.
In the context of virtual agent facial emotional expressions, we identified the following dynamics of the N170 amplitude: attention (passive/active) showed no signaling effect; active attention to neutral virtual agent facial emotions reduced the N170 amplitude; significant interactions were observed between the factors "emotion × attention" and "environment × attention," but no interaction was found among all three factors.
The immersive quality of the environment in which visual and emotional events are presented has a less pronounced effect on early-stage facial processing at N170 amplitude. Thus, our findings indicate that the N170 amplitude is primarily modulated by the emotional content and attention directed to virtual agent facial emotional expressions.
从文献中可知，对虚拟主体的面部感知会影响事件相关电位（ERP）成分的波幅和潜伏期。然而，目前在虚拟现实环境中尚未研究N170成分对虚拟主体面部情绪的敏感性以及对面部情绪表达的关注程度，而这正是我们研究的目的。
采用脑电图记录以及对虚拟主体中性、快乐和厌恶面部情绪的二维和三维视觉测试。该方案包括在参与者对每种面部情绪的注意条件下（被动、主动以及从主动到中性面部情绪表达）进行三个阶段的测试。N170事件相关电位的波幅也在二维和虚拟现实之间的对比分析中得到体现。
在虚拟主体面部情绪表达的背景下，我们确定了N170波幅的以下动态变化：注意（被动/主动）未显示出信号效应；对中性虚拟主体面部情绪的主动注意降低了N170波幅；观察到“情绪×注意”和“环境×注意”因素之间存在显著交互作用，但在所有三个因素之间未发现交互作用。
呈现视觉和情感事件的环境的沉浸质量对N170波幅的早期面部加工影响较小。因此，我们的研究结果表明，N170波幅主要受虚拟主体面部情绪表达的情感内容和注意的调节。
