Face-specific event-related potential in humans is independent from facial expression

A face-specific brain EEG potential at approximately 160 ms after stimulus presentation has recently been described by various research groups. Most of these studies analysed this face-specific brain potential using smiling faces as stimuli. In electrophysiological studies, however, differences in amplitude due to the emotional valence of the stimuli were described as early as 100 ms after stimulus presentation. In order to investigate the effect of facial expressions with different emotional content on face-specific brain EEG potentials, event-related potentials (ERPs) to faces with sad, happy and neutral expressions were compared to ERPs elicited with buildings in 16 healthy subjects. A face-specific potential at vertex approximately 160 ms after stimulus presentation has been verified in the present study. No significant differences in latency or amplitude of this component were found for different facial expressions.