Increasing perceived happiness in neutral faces by posing a smile: An electroencephalography (EEG) frequency-tagging...

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Facial feedback hypothesis suggests facial expressions influence emotional experience.
• Previous electroencephalography (EEG) studies lacked robust evidence for facial feedback's effect on emotional face processing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of facial feedback on the neural processing of emotional facial expressions using EEG frequency tagging.
• To provide objective evidence for the facial feedback hypothesis.

Main Methods:

• Utilized electroencephalography (EEG) frequency tagging for high signal-to-noise ratio implicit stimulus processing.
• Healthy adult participants (N=47) viewed neutral, happy, and angry faces while either smiling or maintaining a neutral expression.
• Analyzed neural discrimination of happy versus neutral faces based on power at the oddball frequency.

Main Results:

• Smiling led to reduced neural discrimination between happy and neutral faces in the left occipitotemporal region.
• This effect was indicated by decreased neural power at the oddball frequency during smiling.

Conclusions:

• Voluntary smiling, and subsequent facial feedback, may enhance the perception of neutral faces as happier.
• Findings provide evidence supporting the facial feedback hypothesis in the context of visual emotional processing.