Open AccessEmotional face recognition and EEG measures
Author(s) -
Walter Mahler,
Sandra Reder
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
neuropsychological trends
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.198
H-Index - 7
eISSN - 1970-321X
pISSN - 1970-3201
DOI - 10.7358/neur-2007-001-mahl
Subject(s) - electroencephalography , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , scalp , cognitive psychology , emotional expression , facial recognition system , cognition , audiology , pattern recognition (psychology) , neuroscience , medicine , anatomy
Twenty one adults looked at emotional (sad, happy, fearful) or neutral faces. EEG measures showed that emotional significance of face (stimulus type) modulated the amplitude of EEG, especially for theta and delta frequency band power. Also, emotional discrimination by theta was more distributed on the posterior sites of the scalp for the emotional stimuli. Thus, this frequency band variation could represent a complex set of cognitive processes whereby selective attention becomes focused on an emotional-relevant stimulus.