Baker J, Ngo Hvv, Efthimiou T N, Elsenaar A, Mehu M, Korb S
Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Derby, Derby, UK.
Commun Psychol. 2025 Jul 2;3(1):94. doi: 10.1038/s44271-025-00281-y.
Theories of embodied cognition suggest that after an initial visual processing stage, emotional faces elicit spontaneous facial mimicry and that the accompanying change in proprioceptive facial feedback contributes to facial emotion recognition. However, this temporal sequence has not yet been properly tested, given the lack of methods allowing to manipulate or interfere with facial muscle activity at specific time points. The current study (N = 52, 28 women) investigated this key question using EEG and facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES)-a technique offering superior control over which facial muscles are activated and when. Participants categorised neutral, happy and sad avatar faces as either happy or sad and received fNMES (except in the control condition) to bilateral zygomaticus major muscles during early visual processing (-250 to +250 ms of face onset), or later visual processing, when mimicry typically arises (500-1000 ms after face onset). Both early and late fNMES resulted in a happiness bias specific to neutral faces, which was mediated by a reduced N170 in the early window. In contrast, a modulation of the beta-band (13-22 Hz) coherence between somatomotor and occipital cortices was found in the late fNMES, although this did not predict categorisation choice. We propose that facial feedback biases emotion recognition at different visual processing stages by reducing visual processing load.
具身认知理论表明，在初始视觉处理阶段之后，情绪化的面孔会引发自发的面部模仿，并且本体感受性面部反馈的伴随变化有助于面部情绪识别。然而，鉴于缺乏能够在特定时间点操纵或干扰面部肌肉活动的方法，这一 时间顺序尚未得到恰当检验。本研究（N = 52，28 名女性）使用脑电图（EEG）和面部神经肌肉电刺激（fNMES）——一种能更好地控制激活哪些面部肌肉以及何时激活的技术，对这一关键问题进行了调查。参与者将中性、开心和悲伤的虚拟头像面孔归类为开心或悲伤，并在早期视觉处理阶段（面部出现后 -250 至 +250 毫秒）或后期视觉处理阶段（通常在面部出现后 500 - 1000 毫秒，此时模仿通常会出现），对双侧颧大肌进行 fNMES（对照条件除外）。早期和晚期 fNMES 均导致了针对中性面孔的快乐偏差，这在早期窗口中由 N170 的减少介导。相比之下，在晚期 fNMES 中发现了躯体运动皮层和枕叶皮层之间β波段（13 - 22 赫兹）相干性的调制，尽管这并未预测分类选择。我们提出，面部反馈通过降低视觉处理负荷在不同视觉处理阶段偏向情绪识别。
