ASYNCH7 I+II Role of imitation and hormones in emotion recognition

What is the relationship between imitation and emotion recognition?

Unconscious imitation of facial expressions supports understanding and identifying emotions by activating corresponding brain regions.

What did experimental evidence on brain lesions find to support imitation's role in emotion recognition?

Participants with disrupted activity in face-specific brain areas due to lesions had impaired emotion recognition.

What is the role of the right somatosensory cortex (rSC) in emotion recognition?

It processes somatic responses (sensory inputs) and simulates/recognises facial expressions.

What is the Simulationist Hypothesis?

It suggests that emotion recognition involves simulating the emotions we observe in others.

How did the rTMS study aim to test the simulationist hypothesis (identify type of task and brain areas targeted)

by making participants perform an expression matching task while using rTMS to target face vs finger areas in the brain

What was the aim of the rTMS study

to assess how targeted brain stimulation of somatic responses impacts emotion recognition

What two brain face areas were targeted in rTMS study

right occipital face area (rOFA) and face area of the right somatosensory cortex (rSC)

According to the rTMS study, what does accurate facial expression matching dependent on

both the rOFA and the rSC

What is low-level mind reading?

Mimicking visible expressions to understand others' emotions.

What is high-level mind reading?

Simulating mental states or decisions based on environmental factors including background information, imagination etc

How does simulation integrate environmental factors?

Background context and situational cues refine emotion recognition.

Facial emotional expressions can be misidentified due to two factors

if one’s own mental state or the environment is suppressed/ignored

Regions responsible for emotional face processing are activated by ?

facial emotional expressions

What is oxytocin known as?

The hormone of love and trust.

What did one study aim to do by administrating oxytocin

to test whether it influenced facial emotion recognition in people with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)

What were the key findings of Timmerman et al. (2017) oxytocin administration study (which emotions)?

Oxytocin improved recognition of fearful and happy facial expressions in young adults with ASPD

Why is recognizing fearful facial expressions important (what does it prevent)?

Correctly perceiving distress signals can inhibit aggression in individuals.

What factor influencing males’ emotion recognition accuracy did Lausen et al. (2020) examine ?

modality of stimulus presentation (voice, face, voice-face)

Which modality showed the highest recognition accuracy?

Audio-visual stimuli had significantly higher accuracy than auditory or visual stimuli.

What association did testosterone have with emotion recognition?

Positive association with recognition accuracy.

What association did cortisol have with emotion recognition?

Positive association with reaction time.

What conclusion was drawn about testosterone and cortisol?

Their interaction affects recognition accuracy and response times, though effect sizes were small.

What were the findings on emotion recognition across the menstrual cycle?

No significant differences in accuracy, reaction time, or emotion classification.

Nature of emotion recognition throughout menstrual cycle

remains stable