Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Covert Versus Overt Processing of Happy, Fearful and Sad Facial Expressions

Behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of the influence of task demands on the processing of happy, sad, and fearful expressions were investigated in a within-subjects study that compared a perceptual distraction condition with task-irrelevant faces (e.g., covert emotion task) to an emotion...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brain sciences 2021-07, Vol.11 (7), p.942
Main Authors: Maffei, Antonio, Goertzen, Jennifer, Jaspers-Fayer, Fern, Kleffner, Killian, Sessa, Paola, Liotti, Mario
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
attention
emotion
Emotions
EPN
ERPs
Event-related potentials
Face
Gender
LPP
N170
Pattern recognition
Sex discrimination
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of the influence of task demands on the processing of happy, sad, and fearful expressions were investigated in a within-subjects study that compared a perceptual distraction condition with task-irrelevant faces (e.g., covert emotion task) to an emotion task-relevant categorization condition (e.g., overt emotion task). A state-of-the-art non-parametric mass univariate analysis method was used to address the limitations of previous studies. Behaviorally, participants responded faster to overtly categorized happy faces and were slower and less accurate to categorize sad and fearful faces; there were no behavioral differences in the covert task. Event-related potential (ERP) responses to the emotional expressions included the N170 (140-180 ms), which was enhanced by emotion irrespective of task, with happy and sad expressions eliciting greater amplitudes than neutral expressions. EPN (200-400 ms) amplitude was modulated by task, with greater voltages in the overt condition, and by emotion, however, there was no interaction of emotion and task. ERP activity was modulated by emotion as a function of task only at a late processing stage, which included the LPP (500-800 ms), with fearful and sad faces showing greater amplitude enhancements than happy faces. This study reveals that affective content does not necessarily require attention in the early stages of face processing, supporting recent evidence that the core and extended parts of the face processing system act in parallel, rather than serially. The role of voluntary attention starts at an intermediate stage, and fully modulates the response to emotional content in the final stage of processing.
ISSN:2076-3425
2076-3425
DOI:10.3390/brainsci11070942