Open AccessDynamic human and avatar facial expressions elicit differential brain responses
Author(s) -
Lorena Kegel,
Peter Brugger,
Sascha Frühholz,
Thomas Grünwald,
Peter Hilfiker,
Oona Kohnen,
Miriam Laura Loertscher,
Dieter Mersch,
Anton Rey,
Teresa Sollfrank,
Bettina K. Steiger,
Joerg Sternagel,
Michel Weber,
Hennric Jokeit
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
social cognitive and affective neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.229
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1749-5024
pISSN - 1749-5016
DOI - 10.1093/scan/nsaa039
Subject(s) - avatar , psychology , superior temporal sulcus , facial expression , human brain , perception , amygdala , cognitive psychology , middle temporal gyrus , neuroscience , functional magnetic resonance imaging , communication , computer science , human–computer interaction
Computer-generated characters, so-called avatars, are widely used in advertising, entertainment, human–computer interaction or as research tools to investigate human emotion perception. However, brain responses to avatar and human faces have scarcely been studied to date. As such, it remains unclear whether dynamic facial expressions of avatars evoke different brain responses than dynamic facial expressions of humans. In this study, we designed anthropomorphic avatars animated with motion tracking and tested whether the human brain processes fearful and neutral expressions in human and avatar faces differently. Our fMRI results showed that fearful human expressions evoked stronger responses than fearful avatar expressions in the ventral anterior and posterior cingulate gyrus, the anterior insula, the anterior and posterior superior temporal sulcus, and the inferior frontal gyrus. Fearful expressions in human and avatar faces evoked similar responses in the amygdala. We did not find different responses to neutral human and avatar expressions. Our results highlight differences, but also similarities in the processing of fearful human expressions and fearful avatar expressions even if they are designed to be highly anthropomorphic and animated with motion tracking. This has important consequences for research using dynamic avatars, especially when processes are investigated that involve cortical and subcortical regions.