Attentional bias in facial affect processing: Neural correlates of the M300
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1
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Studies examining processing of facial affect (FA) in the healthy population have consistently found displays of positive emotion, for example faces showing happy expressions, have faster reaction times and altered P300 amplitude compared to displays such as sad expressions. Neutral expressions compared to happy have been more sporadic, sometimes showing similar activity and othertimes not. This suggests that bottom-up / automatic attentional processes are bias toward positive FA while ambiguous FA has the potential to be perceived similarly to positive. Yet despite a large list of studies examining this phenomena, none have examined the possible underlying location of this activity. Using an implicit FA processing version of the n-back, this study examined the modulation of attentional processes by FA in a healthy cohort through changes in sensor based and source localised activity of the M300.
Significantly faster reaction times were found for happy and neutral faces compared to sad, while sensor based analysis showed significant differences between happy, sad and neutral emotions localised to the right hemisphere and occuring between 370 and 450ms. While no significant differences were found between conditions at a source level, all three conditions had activity largely localised to the right hemisphere. Maximum Intensity Projections (MIP) were in the right Calcarine fissure for the happy condition, while both the sad and neutral condition showed greater activity in the right fusiform / parahippocampal area. In all three conditions significant activity was found in the right parahippocampal area.
These results suggest a potential role for the right occipital and temporal gyri as areas involved in automatic attention resource allocation for the processing of FA.
Acknowledgements
Dr William Woods, Dr Rachel Batty, Dr Vladimir Litvak, Dr Guillaume Flandin
Keywords:
MEG,
M300,
facial affect,
attentional bias,
source localization,
emotional nback
Conference:
ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia, 28 Nov - 1 Dec, 2013.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Emotion and Social
Citation:
Goodin
P,
Ciorciari
J and
Rossell
S
(2013). Attentional bias in facial affect processing: Neural correlates of the M300.
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.212.00072
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Received:
15 Oct 2013;
Published Online:
25 Nov 2013.
*
Correspondence:
Mr. Peter Goodin, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, peter@hitiq.com