Posts tagged emotion
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
New research reveals more about how the brain processes facial expressions and emotions
Facial mimicry—a social behavior in which the observer automatically activates the same facial muscles as the person she is imitating—plays a role in learning, understanding, and rapport. Mimicry can activate muscles that control both smiles and frowns, and evoke their corresponding emotions, positive and negative. The studies reveal new roles of facial mimicry and some of its underlying brain circuitry.
New findings show that:
- Special brains cells dubbed “eye cells” activate in the amygdala of a monkey looking into the eyes of another monkey, even as the monkey mimics the expressions of its counterpart (Katalin Gothard, MD, PhD, abstract 402.02).
- Social status and self-perceptions of power affect facial mimicry, such that powerful individuals suppress their smile mimicry towards other high-status people, while powerless individuals mimic everyone’s smile (Evan Carr, BS, abstract 402.11).
- Brain imaging studies in monkeys have revealed the specific roles of different regions of the brain in understanding facial identity and emotional expression, including one brain region previously identified for its role in vocal processing (Shih-pi Ku, PhD, abstract 263.22).
- Subconscious facial mimicry plays a strong role in interpreting the meaning of ambiguous smiles (Sebastian Korb, PhD, abstract 402.23).
Another recent finding discussed shows that:
- Early difficulties in interactions between parents and infants with cleft lip appear to have a neurological basis, as change in a baby’s facial structure can disrupt the way adult brains react to a child (Christine Parsons, PhD).
(Image Credit: iStockphoto/Joan Vicent Cantó Roig)
Is this the most unpleasant sound in the world?
The ear-splitting screech of a knife on a glass bottle has been identified as the worst sound to the human ear by scientists who studied the brain’s response to unpleasant noises.
People who listened to a series of 74 recordings while having their brain activity measured by an MRI scanner rated the sound of a fork on a glass as the second worst noise, followed by chalk on a blackboard.
The scans revealed that unpleasant sounds provoked a stronger response in the brain than pleasant ones such as the noise of blubbing water. While sounds are processed in the brain’s auditory cortex, uncomfortable noises activate the amygdala, a separate brain region which processes emotions.
The researchers studied a group of 13 volunteers and found that sounds with a frequency of between 2,000 and 5,000 Hz, the range at which our ears are the most sensitive, were the hardest to bear.
Although it remains unclear why our ears are most sensitive to this type of sound, researchers noted that screams, which we naturally find uncomfortable, fall within the same range.
Dr Sukhbinder Kumar of Newcastle University, author of the study, which was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, said: “It appears there is something very primitive kicking in. It’s a possible distress signal from the amygdala to the auditory cortex.”
His colleague Prof Tim Griffiths added: “This might be a new inroad into emotional disorders and disorders like tinnitus and migraine, in which there seems to be heightened perception of the unpleasant aspects of sounds.”
Concordia student collaborates with Australian neuroscientist to create music based on raw emotions
What does anger sound like? What music does sorrow imply? Human emotion is being given a new soundtrack thanks to an exciting new collaboration between art and neuroscience.
Concordia University researcher Erin Gee is taking feelings to a new level by tapping directly into the human brain, delivering music powered purely by the human body and its emotions. Using data collected from physiological displays of emotion, Gee is creating a software and hardware system that incorporates a set of experimental musical instruments that will perform a symphony of sentiments.
This research could have significant therapeutic benefits for those who have difficulty expressing emotion. Individuals with autism disorders, for example, often struggle to understand the emotions of others. Gee’s robotic technology could be used to teach them how to identify feelings by externalising and exaggerating them into such forms as music.
At this year’s Tokyo Games Show, Japanese purveyor of electronically-augmented fashion Neurowear unveiled the successor to its Necomimi brain-activated cat ears. It’s called Shippo, and it’s a brain-controlled motorized tail that responds to the user’s current emotional state with corresponding wagging.
Shippo requires a NeuroSky electroencephalograph (EEG) headset, alongside a clip-on heart monitor, in order to observe brain activity and pick up on the user’s emotional state. This information is then translated to wagging, which will be soft and slow or hard and fast, depending on whether one is relaxing or excited/anxious. The EEG headset communicates with the fluffy appendage via a Bluetooth connection.
When women are aroused, they overlook certain “disgust elicitors” associated with sex, enabling them to go ahead with the deed, according to a paper published by Dutch clinical psychologists.
According to the study, published in the journal PLoS, humans have somehow managed to strike a successful balance between two important evolutionary functions — sex and disgust. The latter is considered by some psychologists to be a natural defence mechanism against disease — other people’s mouths, for instance, pose a higher risk of contamination and are therefore considered an external threat perceived as highly disgusting. When it comes to the nitty gritty of sex, there are plenty of “disgust elicitors” that we relate to contamination says the paper, namely saliva, sweat and semen.
In making this link, the paper’s authors’ decided to tackle a rather interesting question: how do people have pleasurable sex at all?
UMD Study Shows Exercise May Protect Against Future Emotional Stress
Moderate exercise may help people cope with anxiety and stress for an extended period of time post-workout, according to a study by kinesiology researchers in the University of Maryland School of Public Health published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.
"While it is well-known that exercise improves mood, among other benefits, not as much is known about the potency of exercise’s impact on emotional state and whether these positive effects endure when we’re faced with everyday stressors once we leave the gym," explains J. Carson Smith, assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology. "We found that exercise helps to buffer the effects of emotional exposure. If you exercise, you’ll not only reduce your anxiety, but you’ll be better able to maintain that reduced anxiety when confronted with emotional events."
Smith, whose research explores how exercise and physical activity affect brain function, aging and mental health, compared how moderate intensity cycling versus a period of quiet rest (both for 30 minutes) affected anxiety levels in a group of healthy college students. He assessed their anxiety state before the period of activity (or rest), shortly afterward (15 minutes after) and finally after exposing them to a variety of highly arousing pleasant and unpleasant photographs, as well as neutral images. At each point, study participants answered 20 questions from the State-Trait Anxiety inventory, which is designed to assess different symptoms of anxiety. All participants were put through both the exercise and the rest states (on different days) and tested for anxiety levels pre-exercise, post-exercise, and post-picture viewing.
Smith found that exercise and quiet rest were equally effective at reducing anxiety levels initially. However, once they were emotionally stimulated (by being shown 90 photographs from the International Affective Picture System, a database of photographs used in emotion research) for ~20 minutes, the anxiety levels of those who had simply rested went back up to their initial levels, whereas those who had exercised maintained their reduced anxiety levels.
"The set of photographic stimuli we used from the IAPS database was designed to simulate the range of emotional events you might experience in daily life," Smith explains. "They represent pleasant emotional events, neutral events and unpleasant events or stimuli. These vary from pictures of babies, families, puppies and appetizing food items, to very neutral things like plates, cups, furniture and city landscapes, to very unpleasant images of violence, mutilations and other gruesome things."
The study findings suggest that exercise may play an important role in helping people to better endure life’s daily anxieties and stressors.
Smith plans to explore if exercise could have the same persistent beneficial effect in patients who regularly experience anxiety and depression symptoms. In collaboration with the new Maryland Neuroimaging Center, he is also exploring the addition of functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to measure brain activity during the period of exposure to emotionally stimulating images to see how exercise may alter the brain’s emotion-related neural networks.
Smith also investigates the role of exercise in preventing cognitive decline in older adults. His research has shown that physical activity promotes changes in the brain that may protect those at high risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
(Source: newsdesk.umd.edu)
Computer, read my lips: Emotion detector developed using a genetic algorithm
A computer is being taught to interpret human emotions based on lip pattern, according to research published in the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing. The system could improve the way we interact with computers and perhaps allow disabled people to use computer-based communications devices, such as voice synthesizers, more effectively and more efficiently.
Karthigayan Muthukaruppanof Manipal International University in Selangor, Malaysia, and co-workers have developed a system using a genetic algorithm that gets better and better with each iteration to match irregular ellipse fitting equations to the shape of the human mouth displaying different emotions. They have used photos of individuals from South-East Asia and Japan to train a computer to recognize the six commonly accepted human emotions - happiness, sadness, fear, angry, disgust, surprise - and a neutral expression. The upper and lower lip is each analyzed as two separate ellipses by the algorithm.
"In recent years, there has been a growing interest in improving all aspects of interaction between humans and computers especially in the area of human emotion recognition by observing facial expression," the team explains. Earlier researchers have developed an understanding that allows emotion to be recreated by manipulating a representation of the human face on a computer screen. Such research is currently informing the development of more realistic animated actors and even the behavior of robots. However, the inverse process in which a computer recognizes the emotion behind a real human face is still a difficult problem to tackle.
It is well known that many deeper emotions are betrayed by more than movements of the mouth. A genuine smile for instance involves flexing of muscles around the eyes and eyebrow movements are almost universally essential to the subconscious interpretation of a person’s feelings. However, the lips remain a crucial part of the outward expression of emotion. The team’s algorithm can successfully classify the seven emotions and a neutral expression described.
The researchers suggest that initial applications of such an emotion detector might be helping disabled patients lacking speech to interact more effectively with computer-based communication devices, for instance.
(Source: eurekalert.org)
Cocaine-withdrawal emotion mechanism discovered
Washington State University researchers have found a cellular mechanism that contributes to the lack of motivation and negative emotions of a cocaine addict going through withdrawal. Their discovery, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers a deeper look into the cellular and behavioral implications of addiction.
Bradley Winters, lead author of the PNAS paper and a freshly minted WSU doctor of neuroscience, says he, his major advisor Yan Dong, and colleagues at WSU, the University of Pittsburgh and the European Neuroscience Institute focused on cells that produce a signaling molecule called cannabinoid receptor 1, or CB1. Its main function is regulating the communication between nerve cells related to the functions like memory, motor control, perception, mood and appetite. Those same functions are affected by THC, the cannabinoid in its namesake cannabis, or marijuana.
"These receptors are not here just to make marijuana fun,” says Winters. "Their main function is changes in how nerve cells communicate with each other.”
The researchers studied the CB1 cells by producing a line of mice in which the cells that make CB1 were labeled fluorescently. The researchers could then identify the cells and target them with glass pipettes 1/100th the width of a human hair and record electrical currents they use to communicate with other nerve cells.
The CB1 cells act like brakes, slowing down activity in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens, which governs emotion and motivation.
"Cocaine causes profound cellular changes in the nucleus accumbens, but no one has ever looked at this type of cell, and these cells are important because they help organize the output,” says Winters.
The researchers found that cocaine increases the excitability of the CB1 cells, in effect stepping on the brakes of emotion and motivation. When an addict is high on cocaine, the brakes are struggling to slow things down. The problem is, they stay on even when the cocaine has worn off.
"As you do cocaine, it speeds everything up, pushing you to a highly rewarding emotional state,” says Winters. "It is kind of like going down a steep hill so you have to start riding that brake really hard. But then after the cocaine wears off and the hill levels out, you’re still riding that brake just as hard. Now you’re going down a regular, low-grade hill but you’re going 2 mph because your foot is still jammed on the brake.”
The result is a drag on the emotions and motivation of an addict in withdrawal—a drag that could be linked to sluggish activation of the nucleus accumbens.
"That state is like, ‘I feel terrible and I don’t want to do anything,’” says Winters. "You have the high and the crashing low and this low that you feel is what brings you back to the drug because you want to feel better and the drug is the only thing you feel motivation for.”
(Source: news.wsu.edu)
Can simply describing your feelings at stressful times make you less afraid and less anxious? A new UCLA psychology study suggests that labeling your emotions at the precise moment you are confronting what you fear can indeed have that effect.
Marketers are using neuroscience to create advertising which speaks directly to your brain.
How do you decide which running shoes to buy? Why do you prefer the iPhone over all other smart phones? Why did smokers crave a cigarette after watching an ad designed to turn people off smoking, while non-smokers were disgusted by it? These are the questions advertisers, marketers and market researchers are constantly faced with and Swinburne Neuroscience Professor Richard Silberstein has some of the answers.