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Different brain activity in response to emotional faces alone and augmented by contextual information
Author(s) -
Lee Kyung Hwa,
Siegle Greg J.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.12254
Subject(s) - psychology , emotional valence , reactivity (psychology) , valence (chemistry) , facial expression , context (archaeology) , cognitive psychology , emotional expression , cognition , amygdala , developmental psychology , neuroscience , communication , medicine , paleontology , physics , alternative medicine , pathology , quantum mechanics , biology
This study examined the extent to which emotional face stimuli differ from the neural reactivity associated with more ecological contextually augmented stimuli. Participants were scanned when they viewed contextually rich pictures depicting both emotional faces and context, and pictures of emotional faces presented alone. Emotional faces alone were more strongly associated with brain activity in paralimbic and social information processing regions, whereas emotional faces augmented by context were associated with increased and sustained activity in regions potentially representing increased complexity and subjective emotional experience. Furthermore, context effects were modulated by emotional intensity and valence. These findings suggest that cortical elaboration that is apparent in contextually augmented stimuli may be missed in studies of emotional faces alone, whereas emotional faces may more selectively recruit limbic reactivity.