Don’t look back in anger: the rewarding value of a female face is discounted by an angry expression

The modulating effect of emotional expression on the rewarding nature of attractive and nonattractive female faces in heterosexual men was explored in a motivated viewing paradigm. This paradigm, which is an indicator of neural reward, requires the viewer to expend effort to maintain or reduce image-viewing times. Males worked to extend the viewing time for happy and neutral attractive faces but to reduce the viewing time for the attractive angry faces. Attractive angry faces were rated as more aesthetically pleasing than the nonattractive faces; however, the males worked to reduce their viewing time to a level comparable with the nonattractive neutral and happy faces. Therefore, the addition of an angry expression onto an otherwise attractive face renders it unrewarding and aversive to potential mates. Mildly happy expressions on the nonattractive faces did little to improve their attractiveness or reward potential, with males working to reduce viewing time for all nonattractive faces

Affective Bias without Hemispheric Competition: Evidence for Independent Processing Resources in Each Cortical Hemisphere

We assessed the extent of neural competition for attentional processing resources in early visual cortex between foveally presented task stimuli and peripheral emotional distracter images. Task-relevant and distracting stimuli were shown in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams to elicit the steady-state visual evoked potential, which serves as an electrophysiological marker of attentional resource allocation in early visual cortex. A taskrelated RSVP stream of symbolic letters was presented centrally at 15 Hz while distracting RSVP streams were displayed at 4 or 6 Hz in the left and right visual hemifields. These image streams always had neutral content in one visual field and would unpredictably switch from neutral to unpleasant content in the opposite visual field. We found that the steady-state visual evoked potential amplitude was consistently modulated as a function of change in emotional valence in peripheral RSVPs, indicating sensory gain in response to distracting affective content. Importantly, the facilitated processing for emotional content shown in one visual hemifield was not paralleled by any perceptual costs in response to the task-related processing in the center or the neutral image stream in the other visual hemifield. Together, our data provide further evidence for sustained sensory facilitation in favor of emotional distracters. Furthermore, these results are in line with previous reports of a “different hemifield advantage” with lowlevel visual stimuli and are suggestive of independent processing resources in each cortical hemisphere that operate beyond lowlevel visual cues, that is, with complex images that impact early stages of visual processing via reentrant feedback loops from higher order processing areas

Rapid neural categorization of angry and fearful faces is specifically impaired in boys with autism

BACKGROUND: Difficulties with facial expression processing may be associated with the characteristic social impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Emotional face processing in ASD has been investigated in an abundance of behavioral and EEG studies, yielding, however, mixed and inconsistent results. METHODS: We combined fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) with EEG to assess the neural sensitivity to implicitly detect briefly presented facial expressions among a stream of neutral faces, in 23 boys with ASD and 23 matched typically developing (TD) boys. Neutral faces with different identities were presented at 6 Hz, periodically interleaved with an expressive face (angry, fearful, happy, sad in separate sequences) every fifth image (i.e., 1.2 Hz oddball frequency). These distinguishable frequency tags for neutral and expressive stimuli allowed direct and objective quantification of the expression-categorization responses, needing only four sequences of 60 s of recording per condition. RESULTS: Both groups show equal neural synchronization to the general face stimulation and similar neural responses to happy and sad faces. However, the ASD group displays significantly reduced responses to angry and fearful faces, compared to TD boys. At the individual subject level, these neural responses allow to predict membership of the ASD group with an accuracy of 87%. Whereas TD participants show a significantly lower sensitivity to sad faces than to the other expressions, ASD participants show an equally low sensitivity to all the expressions. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate an emotion-specific processing deficit, instead of a general emotion-processing problem: Boys with ASD are less sensitive than TD boys to rapidly and implicitly detect angry and fearful faces. The implicit, fast, and straightforward nature of FPVS-EEG opens new perspectives for clinical diagnosis.status: Published onlin

Rapid neural categorization of angry and fearful faces is specifically impaired in boys with autism spectrum disorder

BACKGROUND: Difficulties with facial expression processing may be associated with the characteristic social impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Emotional face processing in ASD has been investigated in an abundance of behavioral and EEG studies, yielding, however, mixed and inconsistent results. METHODS: We combined fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) with EEG to assess the neural sensitivity to implicitly detect briefly presented facial expressions among a stream of neutral faces, in 23 boys with ASD and 23 matched typically developing (TD) boys. Neutral faces with different identities were presented at 6 Hz, periodically interleaved with an expressive face (angry, fearful, happy, sad in separate sequences) every fifth image (i.e., 1.2 Hz oddball frequency). These distinguishable frequency tags for neutral and expressive stimuli allowed direct and objective quantification of the expression-categorization responses, needing only four sequences of 60 s of recording per condition. RESULTS: Both groups show equal neural synchronization to the general face stimulation and similar neural responses to happy and sad faces. However, the ASD group displays significantly reduced responses to angry and fearful faces, compared to TD boys. At the individual subject level, these neural responses allow to predict membership of the ASD group with an accuracy of 87%. Whereas TD participants show a significantly lower sensitivity to sad faces than to the other expressions, ASD participants show an equally low sensitivity to all the expressions. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate an emotion-specific processing deficit, instead of a general emotion-processing problem: Boys with ASD are less sensitive than TD boys to rapidly and implicitly detect angry and fearful faces. The implicit, fast, and straightforward nature of FPVS-EEG opens new perspectives for clinical diagnosis

Gender and hormone effects on the perception of faces

We review the effects of reproductive hormones and observer gender on face appearance and perception. Sex differences in face structure are apparent from birth: baby boys look older and more independent than baby girls, and masculinity reduces attractiveness in infant faces. Women are more sensitive to infant faces than men. This sensitivity differences between genders (a) appears for judgments of infant cuteness, (b) disappears when comparing postmenopausal women with men, (c) is absent for judgments of emotion and age in infant faces, and (d) is modulated by sex hormone levels and experience with infants. Men’s growth through puberty exceeds that of women, increasing male facial variation and facial width (relative to face height). Male face width predicts the tendency to exploit others in economic games, and is a cue to perception of low trustworthiness, particularly to women and individuals of low dominance. Trust and attractiveness are further affected by head posture. For adult faces, heterosexual women are motivated to work to see attractive faces of either sex, whereas heterosexual men work only for attractive female faces. Sexually dimorphic face traits and attractiveness both affect have positive effects on motivation to work. Gender differences in face perception seem linked to the extent faces activate brain ‘reward systems’.<br/

Gender and hormone effects on the perception of faces

We review the effects of reproductive hormones and observer gender on face appearance and perception. Sex differences in face structure are apparent from birth: baby boys look older and more independent than baby girls, and masculinity reduces attractiveness in infant faces. Women are more sensitive to infant faces than men. This sensitivity differences between genders (a) appears for judgments of infant cuteness, (b) disappears when comparing postmenopausal women with men, (c) is absent for judgments of emotion and age in infant faces, and (d) is modulated by sex hormone levels and experience with infants. Men’s growth through puberty exceeds that of women, increasing male facial variation and facial width (relative to face height). Male face width predicts the tendency to exploit others in economic games, and is a cue to perception of low trustworthiness, particularly to women and individuals of low dominance. Trust and attractiveness are further affected by head posture. For adult faces, heterosexual women are motivated to work to see attractive faces of either sex, whereas heterosexual men work only for attractive female faces. Sexually dimorphic face traits and attractiveness both affect have positive effects on motivation to work. Gender differences in face perception seem linked to the extent faces activate brain ‘reward systems’.<br/