Emotional Expression Notes - 4

Emotional Expression

Learning Objectives

• Understand brain systems involved in analyzing expressions and emotional experiences.
• Recognize that brain systems for analyzing others' expressions overlap with those for experiencing emotions.
• Learn that biases in interpreting emotions can lead to psychopathology and aberrant cognition.

Neurological Basis and Utility

• Understanding the neurological basis of recognizing emotions and its role in social learning.
• Correlation with empathy: matching emotions to others by putting yourself in their shoes.
• Expressions can be ambiguous and subject to biased interpretation.
• Bias can contribute to psychopathology.

Cultural Consistency and Variation

• Emotional expressions are generally constant across cultures.
• Paul Ekman's study in Papua New Guinea demonstrated consistent facial expressions of disgust.
• Six basic expressions are relatively consistent.
• Production of emotional expressions seems consistent, with similar scenarios eliciting similar expressions across cultures.
• Charles Darwin noted cross-cultural and developmental similarities in emotional expressions.
• Even deaf and blind infants produce typical expressions.
• Production of emotions and expressions appears innate and consistent across cultures.
• Recognition of expressions has small cultural differences.
• Glasgow team's work shows that while smiling expressions are similar between East Asians and Western Caucasians, the amplitude of movement differs (eyes for Asians, mouth for Westerners).
• Negative expressions are displayed with varying frequency across cultures (more in the West, inhibited in the East).
• Subtle cultural differences exist in the meaning of expressions.

Fear

• Darwin's pictures show similar fear expressions across species (teeth bared).
• Fear can be contagious; children can acquire fear from adults.
• Expressions are not always innate. Monkeys raised without snake exposure do not initially fear snakes.
• Monkeys can learn fear through observation of others reacting to snakes.
• Fear learning is stronger for snakes than arbitrary objects, suggesting an innate preparedness to associate snake-like movement with fear.
• Learning fear from others is adaptive, allowing avoidance of poisonous snakes without constant reactions to non-poisonous ones.
• This illustrates social learning: vicariously learning what to fear.
• Orangutans show fear towards toy snakes despite lacking prior experience.
• Monkeys learning fear of specific objects from others can be paralleled to phobia formation in children.

Neurological Basis of Emotional Recognition (Fear)

• Fear expressions activate specific brain regions.
• Amygdala: Brain region showing increased activity when viewing increasingly fearful faces.
• Happy expressions inhibit amygdala response, suggesting selective response to fear.
• Different emotions activate different brain systems.
• Damage to the amygdala impairs fear recognition.
• Amygdala damage reduces sensitivity to visual and auditory expressions of fear.
• Patient with amygdala damage showed reduced experience of fear, even in frightening situations.
• Amygdala is responsible for both experiencing and recognizing fear.
• Patients lacking amygdala do not focus on the eyes, missing key cues for fear recognition (wide eyes, raised eyebrows).

Disgust

• Classic disgust expressions: closing eyes and mouth.
• Disgust is often linked to contaminated foods; aversion to disgust is adaptive for avoiding illness.
• Moral transgression also elicits disgust, though not discussed in detail.
• Disgust helps avoid illness from contaminated food by closing down the senses.
• Expression of disgust prevents inhalation of contaminated particles and tightly closes eyes and mouth.
• Social learning: observing disgust in others can create reticence towards certain foods.

Exaggerating Disgust

• Similar to fear, disgust expressions can be exaggerated.
• Insula cortex: Brain region that becomes more active as disgust is witnessed.

Empathy

• Do the same brain systems activate when experiencing emotions and witnessing them in others?
• Mapping the brain for pleasure and disgust; watching others experience these emotions.
• Emotion perception occurs in the same brain region.
• Disgust: Experiencing disgust via odours and watching others react to them both activate the insula cortex.

Experiment

• Participants watched films of actors reacting to odours.
• Neutral reaction vs. disgusted reaction.
• Pleasurable reaction.
• Contrasting brain activity during disgust expression versus neutral expression.
• Insula cortex: Brain region more active during observed disgust than observed neutral expression, consistent with Mary Phillips' work.
• Participants also experienced pleasant and disgusting odours (e.g., rotten eggs).
• Anterior insula activated by experiencing unpleasant odours.
• The same brain region is activated by both smelling unpleasant odours and seeing others disgusted.
• Neurological basis of empathy: the same brain systems analyze and experience emotions.
• Processing the sight of others' disgust and experiencing unpleasant smells occur in the same system.
• Basis for empathy: understanding others' emotions by matching them to our own.
• Witnessing others' disgust evokes a similar feeling.
• Both disgust and fear can lead to vicarious/social learning.
• Examples: fear of snakes, food preferences influenced by disgust.

Neuropsychology (Disgust)

• Insula cortex is active during the experience and observation of disgust.
• Damage to the insula cortex impairs the ability to recognize disgust.
• Huntington's disease: Damage to the anterior insular cortex (and basal ganglia) disrupts recognition of disgust in others.
• Relatives of Huntington's disease patients, even without symptoms, show impaired recognition of disgust expressions.
• Emotional recognition can be a diagnostic tool for brain pathology.

Classifying Emotions and Its Effect

• Classifying emotions can affect mood and behavior.
• Ambiguous expressions: Intermediate emotions are harder to classify; reaction time increases.
• Emotional expressions are often mixed and not exaggerated, making recognition difficult.
• Context matters, ambiguous facial expressions are open to biased interpretation.
• Facial expression recognition is influenced by body language.

Biases in Interpretation

• Low mood/depression: Negativity bias, recognizing expressions as negative.
• Conduct disorder: Bias to attribute hostility to others, which can be self-reinforcing.
• If an observer interprets another person as hostile, it can trigger defensive reactions.
• Biased interpretation leads to copying of negative emotion, which may be reciprocated.
• Positive interpretation of a neutral face can uplift the observer's mood.
• Shifting interpretation can create a more virtuous cycle, where positive emotions are interpreted and reacted to positively.
• Interpretation affects emotional spirals (downward or upward).

Training Program for Conduct Disorder

• Training program: Individuals classify expressions as happy or angry.
• Identifying the transition point from hostility to positivity.
• Participants with conduct disorder are given ambiguous faces and asked to choose between "happy" or "angry".
• Feedback is biased: "Happy" responses are deemed correct, while "angry" responses are incorrect.
• Post-training, the boundary between perceiving anger and happiness shifts.
• Individuals are more likely to classify ambiguous expressions as happy.
• Training adolescents with conduct disorder shifts emotional attribution.
• Less anger and more happiness are perceived post-training.
• Participants report feeling less angry.
• Staff report less aggressive behavior.
• Artificial training in recognizing expressions reduces anger and aggression.
• Biased perception of emotional expressions can causally enhance anger and aggression.
• Biased emotion perceptions can contribute to mood disorders such as depression and conduct disorder.

Emotional Expressions and Attractiveness

• Emotional expressions influence the perception of attractiveness.
• Social signals: Gaze direction. Direct gaze signals interaction, averted gaze withholds it.
• Faces looking directly at the camera vs. looking away.
• Ventral thalamus (pleasure center): Activity is modulated by attractiveness and gaze direction.
• Attractive faces looking at the observer activate this reward system (early study with ambiguous results).
• Unattractive faces looking away might correspond to relief.
• The brain system responds to eye contact and attraction.
• Orbitofrontal cortex: Another pleasure center that responds more to attractive faces.
• Sensitive to both attractiveness and expression.
• Positive emotions (smiling, happiness) and attractiveness increase activity in the orbitofrontal cortex.
• A smile and attractiveness activate the brain's reward system.
• Attractiveness: Abstract and Important for interaction cues.
• Looking and smiling indicate interaction, activating the ventral thalamus and orbitofrontal cortex.

Summary

• Brain systems selectively activated by particular emotions (fear: amygdala, disgust: insula cortex).
• Expressions are used for social learning (avoiding contagion, fearful objects).
• Brain systems are involved in both experiencing and perceiving emotions (basis of empathy).
• Biased interpretation in depression and conduct disorder.
• Programs for rehabilitation can regulate aggression.
• Expressions modify the attractiveness of faces.

Capgras Syndrome

• Capgras Syndrome: Individuals believe that close individuals are imposters (robots, aliens).
• Patients can recognize individuals but refuse to accept they are real; they feel unfamiliar.
• Systems in the brain recognize familiarity.
• Familiar faces elicit an emotional response (galvanic skin response).
• Capgras individuals don't show this emotional feeling towards familiar faces.
• They recognize who the person is but feel unfamiliar, leading to confabulation about why they are unfamiliar.

Extra Curricular Activities

• Consider paradigms for treating disorders of eating with modified body images based on what was taught.
• Psychiatry talk in the medical buildings.