On the orbito-striatal interface in (acoustic) emotional processing

The ability to recognize emotion is important to wellbeing and building relationships with others, making this skill important in adolescence. Research investigating adolescents’ ability to recognize facial and vocal emotion expressions has reported differing conclusions about the pattern of emotion recognition across this developmental period. This systematic review aimed to clarify the pattern of recognition for facial and vocal emotion expressions, and the relationship of performance to different task and emotion expression characteristics. A comprehensive and systematic search of the literature was conducted using six databases. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data for adolescents between 11 and 18 years of age and measure accuracy of the recognition of emotion cues in either the face or voice. A total of 2333 studies were identified and 47 met inclusion criteria. The majority of studies focused on facial emotion recognition. Overall, early, mid-, and late-adolescents showed a similar pattern of recognition for both facial and vocal emotion expressions with the exception of Sad facial expressions. Sex of the participant also had minimal impact on the overall recognition of different emotions. However, analysis showed considerable variability according to task and emotion expression characteristics. Future research needs to increase focus on recognition of complex emotions, and low-intensity emotion expressions as well as the influence of the inclusion of Neutral as a response option.

From children to teenagers and then to adults, individuals' emotional expression ability has undergone significant changes. From the compulsory education stage to the general senior middle school stage, students' cognitive and emotional needs will change greatly. Students of different school stages show significant differences in their vocal emotional expression, which not only affects their social skills but also has important guiding significance for educational practice. Therefore, this study focuses on the vocal emotional expression of students at different school stages. This study explores the differences in vocal emotional expression among students at different school stages (primary school, junior high school, and senior high school), with a focus on the expression characteristics of different emotional types and the situation of inconsistent internal and external emotions. The research results show that in terms of emotional types, students at different school stages have a relatively high accuracy rate in expressing sadness, while the accuracy rate for expressing anger is the lowest, and the accuracy rate for expressing anger is significantly lower than that for other emotions. In terms of school stages, the overall accuracy of emotional expression among students improves with the increase of school stages, but the differences between school stages are not significant. In the task of expressing inconsistent internal and external emotions, the study found that senior high school students have significantly better emotional conversion ability than primary and junior high school students, indicating that as the school stage increases, students' adaptability in complex emotional expression tasks gradually improves.

Cortical Inhibition in Alcohol Dependence

Functional contributions of the basal ganglia to emotional prosody: Evidence from ERPs

Studies of human emotion perception have linked a distributed set of brain regions to the recognition of emotion in facial, vocal, and body expressions. In particular, lesions to somatosensory cortex in the right hemisphere have been shown to impair recognition of facial and vocal expressions of emotion. Although these findings suggest that somatosensory cortex represents body states associated with distinct emotions, such as a furrowed brow or gaping jaw, functional evidence directly linking somatosensory activity and subjective experience during emotion perception is critically lacking. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate decoding techniques, we show that perceiving vocal and facial expressions of emotion yields hemodynamic activity in right somatosensory cortex that discriminates among emotion categories, exhibits somatotopic organization, and tracks self-reported sensory experience. The findings both support embodied accounts of emotion and provide mechanistic insight into how emotional expressions are capable of biasing subjective experience in those who perceive them.

The processing of emotion is fundamental in various aspects of human experience. However, our understanding of emotional processes is incomplete, particularly in relation to language processing. Further, individuals such as those with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often show differences in their perception and understanding of emotion. Whilst many characteristics of ASD present to varying degrees in the wider population, the extent to which differences in emotion processing extend beyond those with a diagnosis of ASD remains largely unknown. The aims of this thesis were to determine the links between emotion and language processes in both adults and children, and to determine the relationship between emotion processing and non-clinical levels of autism-like traits, known as the broader autism phenotype (BAP). These aims were achieved by investigating (i) the recognition of facial and vocal emotional cues in relation to autism traits, and (ii) the impact of emotional cues on language learning in relation to autism traits.Chapter 2 aimed to determine how vocal expressions of emotion influenced subsequent recognition of facial emotions, and whether this influence differed according to levels of autism-like traits among typical adults. The results revealed that emotions, expressed via a combination of semantic meaning and prosody, enhanced subsequent facial emotion recognition when the vocal and facial cues were congruent, and impaired recognition when the emotional cues were incongruent. However, these effects were apparent only for those with low levels of autism-like traits and not for those with higher levels.Chapter 3 aimed to determine whether typically developing children were able to match various vocal expressions of emotion to facial expressions, and whether this ability differed between those with low or high levels of autism-like traits. The results showed that the children’s ability to match emotions differed according to emotion type, such that more errors were made when matching expressions of happiness and fear, compared to sadness and anger. However, matching ability did not differ between those with low or high levels of autism-like traits.Taken together, the results of the two studies outlined in Chapters 2 and 3 indicated that adults with higher levels of autism-like traits failed to integrate emotional information across modalities. However children with higher levels of autism-like traits were able to integrate cross-modal emotional information in a similar manner to those with lower levels of autism-like traits. These findings suggest that difficulties integrating emotional information across modalities may be characteristic of the BAP, but may become apparent between mid-childhood and adulthood.Chapter 4 aimed to determine whether vocal emotional cues impacted adults’ ability to learn new words, and explored whether this ability to learn was influenced by levels of autism-like traits. The results revealed that fearful prosody interfered with the ability to learn new words for all participants. Further, happy prosody also interfered with the ability to learn new words, but only for those with lower levels of autism-like traits, and not for those with higher levels of autism-like traits.Chapter 5 explored whether emotional cues influenced word learning ability in children who had either low or high levels of autism-like traits. Eye-tracking measures were also used to determine children’s visual attention relative to emotion type and autism-like traits. The results showed that emotional information did not influence word learning ability. However, different patterns of visual attention emerged between those with low and high levels of autism-like traits. Specifically, children with lower levels of autism-like traits showed the same looking patterns when viewing happy and fearful emotions, which were distinct from their looking patterns in the neutral condition. However, children with high levels of autism-like traits showed distinct looking patterns between the happy and fearful conditions.These studies (Chapters 4 and 5) indicate that, while emotional information was somewhat distracting for all adults during word learning, adults with higher levels of autism-like traits were affected differently according to the type of emotion. Similarly in children, although emotion had no behavioural effect on learning, children with high autism-like traits were affected differentially according to emotion type, while those with low autism-like traits responded equally to both emotions. This finding suggests that differences in the processing of positive and negative emotions within a language learning context may be characteristic of the BAP, and this may have a cumulative impact on learning throughout development.Overall, the thesis results suggest that links between the processing of emotion and the BAP are more pronounced in adulthood. The findings have implications for our understanding of ASD, with respect to its underlying risk factors and characteristics. In addition, this thesis provides insight into the development of emotion processing and individual differences within typical populations.

Accuracy and intensity of posed emotional expressions in unmedicated schizophrenia patients: Vocal and facial channels

ABSTRACTWidespread cortical-subcortical networks are involved in the recognition and discrimination of emotional contents of facial and vocal expression, whereby the cerebellum and basal ganglia are two subcortical regions implicated in these networks with limited evidence to their specific contributions. To investigate this we compared patients with circumscribed cerebellar lesions and patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) on an approved test battery. We studied two groups with subcortical disease, focal cerebellar infarction (n = 22) and PD (n = 22), and a neurological control group with focal supratentorial ischemia (SI) (n = 16) were. Assessments were according to inpatient protocols for neuropsychological routine evaluation, including tests of memory, executive function and attention. Participants completed the Tuebingen Affect Battery, a recognized measure of recognition and discrimination of facial and vocal expression of emotion. As a result, cerebellar lesions were associated with greater impairment than PD and SI in recognition and discrimination of cues of both facial and vocal expressions of differing basic emotions. No confounding effect of other cognitive domains, particularly executive function and attention, was found. Taken together, our findings suggest a specific contribution of the cerebellum to cerebral networks that process facial and vocal emotion expression, related to rapid decisions regulating appropriate behavioral responses in social environments.

Objectives/AimsThe amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) form a crucial part of the emotion circuit and their dysfunction is implicated in affective disorders attested by numerous functional...

The expression of human emotion is integral to social interaction, and in virtual reality it is increasingly common to develop virtual avatars that attempt to convey emotions by mimicking these visual and aural cues, i.e. the facial and vocal expressions. However, errors in (or the absence of) facial tracking can result in the rendering of incorrect facial expressions on these virtual avatars. For example, a virtual avatar may speak with a happy or unhappy vocal inflection while their facial expression remains otherwise neutral. In circumstances where there is conflict between the avatar's facial and vocal expressions, it is possible that users will incorrectly interpret the avatar's emotion, which may have unintended consequences in terms of social influence or in terms of the outcome of the interaction. In this paper, we present a human-subjects study (N = 22) aimed at understanding the impact of conflicting facial and vocal emotional expressions. Specifically we explored three levels of emotional valence (unhappy, neutral, and happy) expressed in both visual (facial) and aural (vocal) forms. We also investigate three levels of head scales (down-scaled, accurate, and up-scaled) to evaluate whether head scale affects user interpretation of the conveyed emotion. We find significant effects of different multimodal expressions on happiness and trust perception, while no significant effect was observed for head scales. Evidence from our results suggest that facial expressions have a stronger impact than vocal expressions. Additionally, as the difference between the two expressions increase, the less predictable the multimodal expression becomes. For example, for the happy-looking and happy-sounding multimodal expression, we expect and see high happiness rating and high trust, however if one of the two expressions change, this mismatch makes the expression less predictable. We discuss the relationships, implications, and guidelines for social applications that aim to leverage multimodal social cues.

Results from recent event-related brain potential (ERP) studies investigating brain processes involved in the detection and analysis of emotional facial expression are reviewed. In all experiments, emotional faces were found to trigger an increased ERP positivity relative to neutral faces. The onset of this emotional expression effect was remarkably early, ranging from 120 to 180ms post-stimulus in different experiments where faces were either presented at fixation or laterally, and with or without non-face distractor stimuli. While broadly distributed positive deflections beyond 250ms post-stimulus have been found in previous studies for non-face stimuli, the early frontocentrally distributed phase of this emotional positivity is most likely face-specific. Similar emotional expression effects were found for six basic emotions, suggesting that these effects are not primarily generated within neural structures specialised for the automatic detection of specific emotions. Expression effects were eliminated when attention was directed away from the location of peripherally presented emotional faces, indicating that they are not linked to pre-attentive emotional processing. When foveal faces were unattended, expression effects were attenuated, but not completely eliminated. It is suggested that these ERP correlates of emotional face processing reflect activity within a neocortical system where representations of emotional content are generated in a task-dependent fashion for the adaptive intentional control of behaviour. Given the early onset of the emotion-specific effects reviewed here, it is likely that this system is activated in parallel with the ongoing evaluation of emotional content in the amygdala and related subcortical brain circuits.

Imaging of Eating Disorders: Multiple Techniques to Demonstrate the Dynamic Brain

Deficits in decoding emotional facial expressions in Parkinson’s disease

Many authors have speculated about a close relationship between vocal expression of emotions and musical expression of emotions. but evidence bearing on this relationship has unfortunately been lacking. This review of 104 studies of vocal expression and 41 studies of music performance reveals similarities between the 2 channels concerning (a) the accuracy with which discrete emotions were communicated to listeners and (b) the emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues used to communicate each emotion. The patterns are generally consistent with K. R. Scherer's (1986) theoretical predictions. The results can explain why music is perceived as expressive of emotion, and they are consistent with an evolutionary perspective on vocal expression of emotions. Discussion focuses on theoretical accounts and directions for future research.

Emotional inferences from speech require the integration of verbal and vocal emotional expressions. We asked whether this integration is comparable when listeners are exposed to their native language and when they listen to a language learned later in life. To this end, we presented native and non-native listeners with positive, neutral and negative words that were spoken with a happy, neutral or sad tone of voice. In two separate tasks, participants judged word valence and ignored tone of voice or judged emotional tone of voice and ignored word valence. While native listeners outperformed non-native listeners in the word valence task, performance was comparable in the voice task. More importantly, both native and non-native listeners responded faster and more accurately when verbal and vocal emotional expressions were congruent as compared to when they were incongruent. Given that the size of the latter effect did not differ as a function of language proficiency, one can conclude that the integration of verbal and vocal emotional expressions occurs as readily in one's second language as it does in one's native language.