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Published on: February 23, 2020
Is a neutral expression also a neutral stimulus? A study with functional magnetic resonance
Fernando Carvajal1, Sandra Rubio, Juan M Serrano
1Department of Biological Psychology and Health, Facultad de Psicologia, Autonomous University of Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco s/n, 28049 Madrid, Spain. fernando.carvajal@uam.es
Experimental Brain Research
|June 4, 2013
Summary
Neutral faces, like emotional ones, activate common brain areas. However, neutral faces engage specific frontal and cerebellar circuits, suggesting more complex cognitive processing during social and gender judgments.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Individuals often attribute affective content to neutral faces.
- Task demands influence how affective judgments are processed.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate cerebral activity patterns for neutral and emotional faces.
- To examine how social versus gender judgment tasks affect brain responses to faces.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used on 21 healthy participants.
- Participants performed social and gender judgment tasks involving neutral and emotional faces.
- Conjunction analyses were employed to compare brain activity.
Main Results:
- Both neutral and emotional faces share common neural substrates.
- Neutral faces uniquely activated cerebellum, frontal, and temporal areas.
- Emotional faces activated the cuneus, anterior cingulate, insula, and other regions.
- Task type modulated brain activity: social tasks recruited frontal areas, while gender tasks involved parietal and temporal regions.
- In the social task, neutral faces led to longer reaction times and increased left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity.
- Emotional faces in the social task distinctly activated the left amygdala.
Conclusions:
- Facial expressions, including neutral ones, are processed through shared neural pathways.
- Neutral faces may elicit more elaborate cognitive processing compared to emotional faces.
- Task context significantly influences the neural processing of facial stimuli.
