Lecture 7

Question 1

What was a study looking at the overlapping of perception and experience of emotions? (Scanner)

Answer 1

• People in scanner in 2 different conditions: one where they observed either disgust/neutral/pleasure facial expression
• Induced those facial expressions in the ppts by feeding disgusting/pleasurable odours into the scanner
• Overlap in vision and experience of disgust in insula
• Simulation of other’s sensorimotor and somatosensory state might be an important part of recognising emotions
• TO perceive others emotional states in others, you need to simulate what you use for your emotions, and the sensorimotor state

Question 2

What was a study looking at emotion perception and embodiment? (TMS)

Answer 2

• Somatosensory cortex = representations of own body
• Ppt would see two different faces one after another, asked if second face was the same facial expression as first, or if it was same identity = used TMS to disrupt brain function by injecting noise into specific areas and disrupt processing
• Used TMS when second face is presented to different parts of brain: OFA, somatosensory cortex, and control stimulation on top of head
• Disruption in right somatosensory cortex = less accurate in identifying if facial expressions are same = plays causal role in perceiving facial expressions in other people
• No effect on facial identity perception = specific to facial expressions
• Disruption in right OFA also has a causal role in identifying facial expressions

Question 3

What was a follow up study on the SC?

Answer 3

• Identified region in brain responsible for identifying/represent own hand, and identifying face
• Stimulating face area (disrupting) has a stronger effect on facial expression perception than stimulating the SC representation of hand
• Need to have uncompromised processing of own face

Question 4

What is facial mimicry?

Answer 4

• Mimicking facial expressions of the other person in interaction = measured with a miograph = unconscious tendency = little electrodes on face that measure potential in facial muscles as action develops
• Tried to disrupt facial mimicry and impact of facial mimicry on perception of facial perception
• Asked to hold pen with mouth: either tight or loosely
• Face is shown and ppt has to label face
• Tightly contracted face has negative effect on labelling other people’s facial expressions = if your own neural and muscular machinery is occupied with another task (holding pen in place), you cannot use it for simulation of other faces = less good at responding to other people’s facial expressions
• Botox injections affect facial expression perceptions and change neural responses = partially paralysed facial muscles = depending on what part of face is paralysed = change in neural response specifically
• Individuals with full facial paralysis are able to recognise facial expressions (expected to not recognise at all)

Question 5

What is mental state attribution?

Answer 5

• Ability to understand others in terms of mental state (Theory of Mind)
• Perceive behaviour and attribute underlying mental state

Question 6

What is the Theory Theory?

Answer 6

• Knowledge-based approach, we have a body of folk psychological knowledge
• This knowledge provides us with info about relation between observable behaviour and unobservable mental states
• Face-based emotion recognition: in order to recognise facial expressions, need knowledge of facial config to labels of names of emotions
• When you observe a config, use their knowledge to infer emotion experiences by other
• BUT co-occurrence of experience and recognition is difficult to explain in this theory

Question 7

What is the Simulation theory?

Answer 7

• Simulation-based approach
• We re-enact others’ mental states in ourselves
• In order to perceive facial expressions, you see a facial config, and recreate it, and analyse how it makes YOU feel = attribute that emotion to the other person
• Emotion-specificity favours this theory
• Patients tend to have no difficulty with conceptual knowledge regarding emotions
• Other areas of mental state attribution (belief attribution) might be better explained by TT account

Question 8

What is the difference between facial identity and facial expression perception?

Answer 8

• Rely on dedicated visual processes
• Less distinct than previously thought = large overlap
• Deeper differences are the link to mental state attribution & facial expression perception is part of a multimodal emotion perception system

Question 9

What is multimodal emotion perception?

Answer 9

• Recognise emotion from face, body posture and voice
• Structural equation modelling to explain factors that explain individual differences
• Clear evidence for a supra-modal factor = good at recognising emotions from face will be good at recognising emotions from posture and voice
• Facial expression is part of this broader ability
• Does not make sense to look at facial expression in isolation = should look at interaction between modalities

Question 10

What are faces in context?

Answer 10

• Body posture = we do not see isolated faces = we see whole people and context to interpret emotional states
• Changes perception of face as soon as you see body

Question 11

What was a study looking at facial expressions and body context?

Answer 11

• Facial expressions (disgust) shown with varying body postures: same pictures on different bodies
• If you ask people to categorise the same facial expression in different body context, people choose disgust when the body context is disgust, anger when body context is anger, little change in fear and sadness
• Sad facial expression in a sad (low) arousal or a fear (high) arousal, there is a categorical switch from how face is perceived FOR THE SAME FACE , just different body context
• Perception of arousal also differs for the same face = same for valence e.g disgust and pride

Question 12

What are body perception networks?

Answer 12

• Similar pattern for faces and bodies
• Anterior Temporal Lobe: neurons respond to face and body information = two different pathways of faces and bodies is brought together to put together a whole person representation of other people
• Extrastriate body area: responds more to body parts not all bodies, and responds earlier than FBA
• Fusiform body area: EBA feeds into here = more holistic processing of body processing
• Posterior STS

Question 13

What was a study looking at whole-person representation in ATL? (What parts do what)

Answer 13

• Showed ppts variance different stimuli: faces, bodies, body parts
• FFA responds most to faces, FBA responds most to bodies and faces, AFP mainly repsonds to faces, and then bodies
• AFP responds more to faces and whole bodies instead of faces and body parts = more integration = higher correlation

Question 14

What was a study looking at integration of body and face?

Answer 14

• Disgust facial expressions on either disgust or anger body contexts = where integration occurs
• Used adaptation technique
• Seen the categorical switch
• Stimulus on left shows disgust, and right = anger, even though faces are identical
• 2 pathways: body and face streams separate, and then come together in ATL, OR series of overlaps from the both streams: if first model is true, when disgust is seen in anger, perceive anger at first but get adapted to disgust. If overlap model is true, disgust and angry body should lead to adaptation to anger
• Results show adaptation shifts away from disgust = adapt to isolated perception
• Integration happens after FFA = must be separate until ATL

Question 15

What is the development of whole-person emotion perception?

Answer 15

• When body/face information is integrated in children
• Ppts had three different behavioural tasks: ability to recognise facial expressions isolated, body postures, and then whole-person
• As people get older= become better at labelling facial expressions and body posture (less pronounced)
• For whole-person task: As children get older, people get better at perceiving the isolated facial expression and separating it to context = still are affected by context

Question 16

What was a study looking at development of whole-person emotion perception? (Myelination effects)

Answer 16

• Looked at white matter
• Age-related myelination of OFA-FFA tract predicts facial expression perception = increase in myelination increases perception
• Age-independent microstructural characteristics of OFA-FFA tract
• STS body - ATL tract predicts influence of body context on facial expression perception