Emotion identification across adulthood using the Dynamic FACES database of emotional expressions in younger, middle aged, and older adults

Vienna Talking Faces (ViTaFa): A multimodal person database with synchronized videos, images, and voices

Social perception relies on different sensory channels, including vision and audition, which are specifically important for judgements of appearance. Therefore, to understand multimodal integration in person perception, it is important to study both face and voice in a synchronized form. We introduce the Vienna Talking Faces (ViTaFa) database, a high-quality audiovisual database focused on multimodal research of social perception. ViTaFa includes different stimulus modalities: audiovisual dynamic, visual dynamic, visual static, and auditory dynamic. Stimuli were recorded and edited under highly standardized conditions and were collected from 40 real individuals, and the sample matches typical student samples in psychological research (young individuals aged 18 to 45). Stimuli include sequences of various types of spoken content from each person, including German sentences, words, reading passages, vowels, and language-unrelated pseudo-words. Recordings were made with different emotional expressions (neutral, happy, angry, sad, and flirtatious). ViTaFa is freely accessible for academic non-profit research after signing a confidentiality agreement form via https://osf.io/9jtzx/ and stands out from other databases due to its multimodal format, high quality, and comprehensive quantification of stimulus features and human judgements related to attractiveness. Additionally, over 200 human raters validated emotion expression of the stimuli. In summary, ViTaFa provides a valuable resource for investigating audiovisual signals of social perception.

The Predictive Role of the Posterior Cerebellum in the Processing of Dynamic Emotions

Recent studies have bolstered the important role of the cerebellum in high-level socio-affective functions. In particular, neuroscientific evidence shows that the posterior cerebellum is involved in social cognition and emotion processing, presumably through its involvement in temporal processing and in predicting the outcomes of social sequences. We used cerebellar transcranial random noise stimulation (ctRNS) targeting the posterior cerebellum to affect the performance of 32 healthy participants during an emotion discrimination task, including both static and dynamic facial expressions (i.e., transitioning from a static neutral image to a happy/sad emotion). ctRNS, compared to the sham condition, significantly reduced the participants' accuracy to discriminate static sad facial expressions, but it increased participants' accuracy to discriminate dynamic sad facial expressions. No effects emerged with happy faces. These findings may suggest the existence of two different circuits in the posterior cerebellum for the processing of negative emotional stimuli: a first-time-independent mechanism which can be selectively disrupted by ctRNS, and a second time-dependent mechanism of predictive "sequence detection" which can be selectively enhanced by ctRNS. This latter mechanism might be included among the cerebellar operational models constantly engaged in the rapid adjustment of social predictions based on dynamic behavioral information inherent to others' actions. We speculate that it might be one of the basic principles underlying the understanding of other individuals' social and emotional behaviors during interactions.

Can the prosocial benefits of episodic simulation transfer to different people and situational contexts?

Previous research has found that episodic simulation of events of helping others can effectively enhance intentions to help the same person involved and the identical situational context as the imagined scenarios. This 'prosocial simulation effect' is argued to reflect, at least in part, associative memory mechanisms whereby the simulation is reactivated when in the same situation as that imagined. However, to date, no study has examined systematically whether this 'prosocial simulation effect' can be transferred to response scenarios involving different people and/or situational contexts to the imagined scenarios, and if so, whether the degree of overlap with the imagined helping episode modulated the transfer effect. Across two experiments, we systematically varied the overlap of the simulated and response scenarios, both in terms of the persons in need and/or the situational contexts, and whether would influence the magnitude of prosocial simulation effect. Results from both experiments showed that the prosocial simulation effect can be transferred to response scenarios involving different people and situational contexts to the simulated scenarios. However, this finding was primarily driven by response scenarios that had a high degree of overlap to the simulated scenarios. The application of our findings to the practical implementation of simulation to promote prosociality in the real world is discussed.

Behavioral and neuroanatomical correlates of facial emotion processing in post-stroke depression

BACKGROUND

Emotion processing deficits are known to accompany depressive symptoms and are often seen in stroke patients. Little is known about the influence of post-stroke depressive (PSD) symptoms and specific brain lesions on altered emotion processing abilities and how these phenomena develop over time. This potential relationship may impact post-stroke rehabilitation of neurological and psychosocial function. To address this scientific gap, we investigated the relationship between PSD symptoms and emotion processing abilities in a longitudinal study design from the first days post-stroke into the early chronic phase.

METHODS

Twenty-six ischemic stroke patients performed an emotion processing task on videos with emotional faces ('happy,' 'sad,' 'anger,' 'fear,' and 'neutral') at different intensity levels (20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100%). Recognition accuracies and response times were measured, as well as scores of depressive symptoms (Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale). Twenty-eight healthy participants matched in age and sex were included as a control group. Whole-brain support-vector regression lesion-symptom mapping (SVR-LSM) analyses were performed to investigate whether specific lesion locations were associated with the recognition accuracy of specific emotion categories.

RESULTS

Stroke patients performed worse in overall recognition accuracy compared to controls, specifically in the recognition of happy, sad, and fearful faces. Notably, more depressed stroke patients showed an increased processing towards specific negative emotions, as they responded significantly faster to angry faces and recognized sad faces of low intensities significantly more accurately. These effects obtained for the first days after stroke partly persisted to follow-up assessment several months later. SVR-LSM analyses revealed that inferior and middle frontal regions (IFG/MFG) and insula and putamen were associated with emotion-recognition deficits in stroke. Specifically, recognizing happy facial expressions was influenced by lesions affecting the anterior insula, putamen, IFG, MFG, orbitofrontal cortex, and rolandic operculum. Lesions in the posterior insula, rolandic operculum, and MFG were also related to reduced recognition accuracy of fearful facial expressions, whereas recognition deficits of sad faces were associated with frontal pole, IFG, and MFG damage.

CONCLUSION

PSD symptoms facilitate processing negative emotional stimuli, specifically angry and sad facial expressions. The recognition accuracy of different emotional categories was linked to brain lesions in emotion-related processing circuits, including insula, basal ganglia, IFG, and MFG. In summary, our study provides support for psychosocial and neural factors underlying emotional processing after stroke, contributing to the pathophysiology of PSD.

An assessment of dynamic facial emotion recognition and theory of mind in children with ADHD: An eye-tracking study

Deficits in social cognition in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been associated with difficulties in functioning. Since recognizing emotional facial expressions is essential for developing the perceptual components of the theory of mind (ToM), it is important to assess this relationship in children with ADHD. This study therefore compared the recognition of emotional stimuli and gaze patterns between children with ADHD and healthy children using eye-tracking with dynamic facial images. It also examined the relationship between facial emotion recognition accuracy, gaze patterns, ToM scores, and ADHD symptoms. Children with ADHD aged 8-13 (n = 47) and a control group (n = 38) completed a facial emotion recognition test, ToM tests, and the Conners' Parent Rating Scale. Participants' gaze patterns in response to dynamic facial emotion expressions were recorded using eye-tracking technology. Children with ADHD exhibited significantly lower accuracy in the recognition of the facial expressions of disgust and anger. The percentage fixation in the eye region was also significantly lower for happy, angry, sad, disgusted, and neutral emotions in the children with ADHD compared to the control group. No relationship was determined between the percentage of fixations on facial areas of interests and ADHD symptoms or ToM tests. This study provides evidence that children with ADHD experience deficits in visual attention to emotional cues. In addition, it suggests that facial emotion recognition deficits in children with ADHD represent a separate domain of social cognition that develops independently of ToM skills and core symptoms. Understanding and treating the social difficulties of individuals with ADHD may help improve their social functioning.

Development of the RIKEN database for dynamic facial expressions with multiple angles

The development of facial expressions with sensing information is progressing in multidisciplinary fields, such as psychology, affective computing, and cognitive science. Previous facial datasets have not simultaneously dealt with multiple theoretical views of emotion, individualized context, or multi-angle/depth information. We developed a new facial database (RIKEN facial expression database) that includes multiple theoretical views of emotions and expressers' individualized events with multi-angle and depth information. The RIKEN facial expression database contains recordings of 48 Japanese participants captured using ten Kinect cameras at 25 events. This study identified several valence-related facial patterns and found them consistent with previous research investigating the coherence between facial movements and internal states. This database represents an advancement in developing a new sensing system, conducting psychological experiments, and understanding the complexity of emotional events.

A Chinese Face Dataset with Dynamic Expressions and Diverse Ages Synthesized by Deep Learning

Facial stimuli have gained increasing popularity in research. However, the existing Chinese facial datasets primarily consist of static facial expressions and lack variations in terms of facial aging. Additionally, these datasets are limited to stimuli from a small number of individuals, in that it is difficult and time-consuming to recruit a diverse range of volunteers across different age groups to capture their facial expressions. In this paper, a deep-learning based face editing approach, StyleGAN, is used to synthesize a Chinese face dataset, namely SZU-EmoDage, where faces with different expressions and ages are synthesized. Leverage on the interpolations of latent vectors, continuously dynamic expressions with different intensities, are also available. Participants assessed emotional categories and dimensions (valence, arousal and dominance) of the synthesized faces. The results show that the face database has good reliability and validity, and can be used in relevant psychological experiments. The availability of SZU-EmoDage opens up avenues for further research in psychology and related fields, allowing for a deeper understanding of facial perception.

Absence of age differences in emotion perception and gaze patterns using a contextually rich film-based assessment

Age differences in emotion perception are now well documented. However, a key limitation of many studies in this literature is the reliance on highly artificial tasks that lack context and consequently have poor ecological validity. This study reports two separate experiments that investigated age differences in emotion perception abilities using a highly contextualised film-based assessment along with a traditional emotion perception task. Experiment 2 additionally included a middle-aged sample and an assessment of eye-gaze patterns to the emotional films. The inclusion of eye-tracking in Experiment 2 was motivated by the fact that older adults consistently show visual biases to static emotion stimuli, yet it remains unclear whether biases also emerge in response to dynamic contextualised emotion stimuli. Experiment 1 identified age effects recognising displays of anger in the traditional emotion perception task but no age differences emerged on the film-based task. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2 with significant group differences on the traditional emotion perception task but no age differences on the film-based task. Experiment 2 also showed that there were no age differences in gaze patterns to these stimuli, showing for the first time that age-related visual biases to emotion stimuli may be task dependent. These findings highlight the fact that task-related features play a key role in the evaluation of age effects in emotion perception.

Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Social Attention Patterns and Emotion Recognition Ability in Male Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social cognition including emotion recognition (ER) abilities. Common symptoms include unusual patterns of visual social attention, which are investigated as early developmental biomarkers for ASD. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) has shown promising results in influencing social functioning in individuals with ASD. However, the effects of tDCS on social attention patterns and ER ability in adolescents with ASD remain unclear. This double-blind, sham-controlled, randomized clinical trial examined the effects of repeated sessions of tDCS on gaze behavior and ER ability in 22 male adolescents diagnosed with ASD. Participants received either 20 min of 2 mA active tDCS or sham stimulation for 10 days and an intra-stimulation training. Social allocation patterns were assessed using eye-tracking paradigms, including ER tasks. Our results indicated no tDCS-specific effects. Both groups showed improvements in ER and more frequent, faster, and longer fixations on the eyes than the mouth, and on social than nonsocial areas. In tasks with low social content, fixating the mouth seemed to increase ER accuracy. Understanding the effects of tDCS on social functioning in adolescents with ASD holds promise for the development of targeted interventions to improve their social cognition abilities.

Characteristics of healthy Japanese young adults with respect to recognition of facial expressions: a preliminary study

BACKGROUND

Emotional cognitive impairment is a core phenotype of the clinical symptoms of psychiatric disorders. The ability to measure emotional cognition is useful for assessing neurodegenerative conditions and treatment responses. However, certain factors such as culture, gender, and generation influence emotional recognition, and these differences require examination. We investigated the characteristics of healthy young Japanese adults with respect to facial expression recognition.

METHODS

We generated 17 models of facial expressions for each of the six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise) at three levels of emotional intensity using the Facial Acting Coding System (FACS). Thirty healthy Japanese young adults evaluated the type of emotion and emotional intensity the models represented to them.

RESULTS

Assessment accuracy for all emotions, except fear, exceeded 60% in approximately half of the videos. Most facial expressions of fear were rarely accurately recognized. Gender differences were observed with respect to both faces and participants, indicating that expressions on female faces were more recognizable than those on male faces, and female participants had more accurate perceptions of facial emotions than males.

CONCLUSION

The videos used may constitute a dataset, with the possible exception of those that represent fear. The subject's ability to recognize the type and intensity of emotions was affected by the gender of the portrayed face and the evaluator's gender. These gender differences must be considered when developing a scale of facial expression recognition.

Development and validation of a natural dynamic facial expression stimulus set

Emotion research commonly uses either controlled and standardised pictures or natural video stimuli to measure participants' reactions to emotional content. Natural stimulus materials can be beneficial; however, certain measures such as neuroscientific methods, require temporally and visually controlled stimulus material. The current study aimed to create and validate video stimuli in which a model displays positive, neutral and negative expressions. These stimuli were kept as natural as possible while editing timing and visual features to make them suitable for neuroscientific research (e.g. EEG). The stimuli were successfully controlled regarding their features and the validation studies show that participants reliably classify the displayed expression correctly and perceive it as genuine. In conclusion, we present a motion stimulus set that is perceived as natural and that is suitable for neuroscientific research, as well as a pipeline describing successful editing methods for controlling natural stimuli.

Age as a potential modulator of alcohol-related deficits

Although their individual significance is well-documented, the interaction effects of age, sex, and alcohol use disorder (AUD) have undergone little systematic investigation. Here, we extend prior work interrogating sex and group (AUD vs. community comparison [CC]) by probing the main and interaction effects of age on emotion processes as well as two conventional neuropsychological tests. Main effects for age and group were anticipated; however, interaction effects comprise our primary focus. While sex differences in AUD prevalence are commonly reported, sex differences within AUD samples are inconsistently found. Therefore, we pose our inquiry regarding sex as exploratory. In this study, 54 CC (n = 30 women) and 55 AUD (n = 14 women) subjects completed a battery that included an emotional face discrimination task, the Trail-Making Test-B (TMT-B), and the Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST). The initial/full models included the main and interaction effects of age (as a continuous variable; 25-59 years of age), sex, and group (AUD, CC). In analysis of the emotional face discrimination task, performance on a non-affective face discrimination task was entered as a covariate. Analysis of emotion identification revealed group and age main (p = .02; d = .53 & .003; d = .50, respectively) and interaction effects (p = .05; d = .41). The latter suggested that age and emotion processing performance were positively correlated in the AUD group, but unrelated in the CC group. Notably, neither sex, main, nor interaction effects achieved significance. Using the full model, analysis of the TMT-B and DSST failed to show sex effects or reveal expected performance decrement in the AUD group. To clarify the latter, simple models including only group as well as correlations between age and performance by group for each task were conducted. These analyses demonstrated the expected AUD-related deficits and suggested differential relationships between age and neurocognitive performance as a function of both group and task. Outcomes across tasks emphasize the need to reframe aging effects, particularly in the context of AUD.

Age differences in social-cognitive abilities across the stages of adulthood and path model investigation of adult social cognition

Accumulating evidence points toward an association between older age and performance decrements in social cognition (SC). We explored age-related variations in four components of SC: emotion recognition, theory of mind, social judgment, and blame attributions. A total of 120 adults divided into three stages (18-34 years, 35-59 years, 60-85 years) completed a battery of SC. Between and within age-group differences in SC were investigated. Path analyses were used to identify relationships among the components. Emotion recognition and theory of mind showed differences beginning either in midlife, or after. Blame attributions and social judgment did not show a significant difference. However, social judgment varied significantly within groups. Path models revealed a relationship between emotion recognition and theory of mind. Findings highlight age-related differences in some components and a link between two components. Strategies promoting social functioning in aging might help to maintain or improve these abilities over time.

A one-hour walk in nature reduces amygdala activity in women, but not in men

Urban dwellers are more likely to develop mental disorders such as mood and anxiety disorder as well as schizophrenia compared to rural dwellers. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that even short-term exposure to nature can improve mood and decrease stress, but the underlying neural mechanisms are currently under investigation. In the present intervention study we examined the effects of a one-hour walk in an urban vs. natural environment on activity in the amygdala, a brain region previously associated with stress processing. Before and after the walk 63 participants underwent an fMRI paradigm inducing social stress. Since there is a pronounced gap in the literature regarding interindividual differences in stress-related neural effects of urban and natural environments, we set out to explore sex differences. We observed that amygdala activity decreased after the walk in nature, but only in women, suggesting that women may profit more from salutogenic effects of nature. Moreover, performance on the arithmetic tasks improved in women after the walk in nature, whereas men performed better after the walk in the urban environment. To our knowledge, this is the first study to report differencial tendencies in men and women concerning the stress-related neural activity as an effect of acute exposure to urban vs. natural environments. Furthermore, our findings highlight the importance of sex differences when exploring effects of the environment on brain function and stress. Evidence for beneficial effects of nature on stress-related brain regions may inform urban design policies to focus on providing more accessible green areas in cities and this study suggests that sex differences in experiencing the environment should be taken into consideration.

Common and unique neural mechanisms of social and nonsocial conflict resolving and adaptation

Humans often need to deal with various forms of information conflicts that arise when they receive inconsistent information. However, it remains unclear how we resolve them and whether the brain may recruit similar or distinct brain mechanisms to process different domains (e.g. social vs. nonsocial) of conflicts. To address this, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and scanned 50 healthy participants when they were asked to perform 2 Stroop tasks with different forms of conflicts: social (i.e. face-gender incongruency) and nonsocial (i.e. color-word incongruency) conflicts. Neuroimaging results revealed that the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex was generally activated in processing incongruent versus congruent stimuli regardless of the task type, serving as a common mechanism for conflict resolving across domains. Notably, trial-based and model-based results jointly demonstrated that the dorsal and rostral medial prefrontal cortices were uniquely engaged in processing social incongruent stimuli, suggesting distinct neural substrates of social conflict resolving and adaptation. The findings uncover that the common but unique brain mechanisms are recruited when humans resolve and adapt to social conflicts.

Presenting KAPODI – The Searchable Database of Emotional Stimuli Sets

Emotional stimuli such as images, words, or video clips are often used in studies researching emotion. New sets are continuously being published, creating an immense number of available sets and complicating the task for researchers who are looking for suitable stimuli. This paper presents the KAPODI-database of emotional stimuli sets that are freely available or available upon request. Over 45 aspects including over 25 key set characteristics have been extracted and listed for each set. The database facilitates finding of and comparison between individual sets. It currently contains sets published between 1963 and 2020. A searchable online version ( https://airtable.com/shrnVoUZrwu6riP9b ) allows users to select specific set characteristics and to find matching sets accordingly, as well as to add new published sets.

How nature nurtures: Amygdala activity decreases as the result of a one-hour walk in nature

Since living in cities is associated with an increased risk for mental disorders such as anxiety disorders, depression, and schizophrenia, it is essential to understand how exposure to urban and natural environments affects mental health and the brain. It has been shown that the amygdala is more activated during a stress task in urban compared to rural dwellers. However, no study so far has examined the causal effects of natural and urban environments on stress-related brain mechanisms. To address this question, we conducted an intervention study to investigate changes in stress-related brain regions as an effect of a one-hour walk in an urban (busy street) vs. natural environment (forest). Brain activation was measured in 63 healthy participants, before and after the walk, using a fearful faces task and a social stress task. Our findings reveal that amygdala activation decreases after the walk in nature, whereas it remains stable after the walk in an urban environment. These results suggest that going for a walk in nature can have salutogenic effects on stress-related brain regions, and consequently, it may act as a preventive measure against mental strain and potentially disease. Given rapidly increasing urbanization, the present results may influence urban planning to create more accessible green areas and to adapt urban environments in a way that will be beneficial for citizens' mental health.

Light makeup decreases receivers' negative emotional experience

Makeup is widely used in modern society and has a positive effect on perceived attractiveness. However, little is known about the other possible outcomes of makeup use. In this study, we investigated whether makeup enhances a receiver's emotional experience. Dynamic faces with or without makeup are presented in Experiments 1 and 2. Participants were asked to imagine themselves video chatting with a target person (expresser) with different expressions: neutral, angry, sad, or happy, and then to appraise their own subjective emotional experience. Emotional valence, arousal, and willingness to communicate were also assessed in Experiment 2. The results showed that makeup improved perceived facial attractiveness and increased the willingness to communicate. More importantly, it revealed that wearing makeup could weaken receivers' negative experiences arising from the angry and sad conditions, which is not the case for the non-makeup condition, but could not affect the happy contagion. Furthermore, incremental changes in the amount of makeup were not accompanied by incremental changes in emotional appraisal (valence and arousal). Overall, we found that makeup may affect emotional contagion and interpersonal communication. Whether the alleviated negative experience due to makeup is adaptive may need further discussion.

Knowledge guides attention to goal-relevant information in older adults

How does viewers’ knowledge guide their attention while they watch everyday events, how does it affect their memory, and does it change with age? Older adults have diminished episodic memory for everyday events, but intact semantic knowledge. Indeed, research suggests that older adults may rely on their semantic memory to offset impairments in episodic memory, and when relevant knowledge is lacking, older adults’ memory can suffer. Yet, the mechanism by which prior knowledge guides attentional selection when watching dynamic activity is unclear. To address this, we studied the influence of knowledge on attention and memory for everyday events in young and older adults by tracking their eyes while they watched videos. The videos depicted activities that older adults perform more frequently than young adults (balancing a checkbook, planting flowers) or activities that young adults perform more frequently than older adults (installing a printer, setting up a video game). Participants completed free recall, recognition, and order memory tests after each video. We found age-related memory deficits when older adults had little knowledge of the activities, but memory did not differ between age groups when older adults had relevant knowledge and experience with the activities. Critically, results showed that knowledge influenced where viewers fixated when watching the videos. Older adults fixated less goal-relevant information compared to young adults when watching young adult activities, but they fixated goal-relevant information similarly to young adults, when watching more older adult activities. Finally, results showed that fixating goal-relevant information predicted free recall of the everyday activities for both age groups. Thus, older adults may use relevant knowledge to more effectively infer the goals of actors, which guides their attention to goal-relevant actions, thus improving their episodic memory for everyday activities.

The effect of momentary mood on appraisal of facial affect and distrust: an experimental approach using ambulatory assessment

Previous laboratory studies have demonstrated that an observer's current mood can influence their processing of facial stimuli, for instance, the appraisal of facial affect. The aim of the present study was to explore the association between current mood and face processing in participants' daily lives, thereby making use of naturally occurring affective states. We employed Ambulatory Assessment (AA) and included two experimental tasks to test whether current mood predicts how participants evaluate (i) the valence of emotional faces and (ii) facial trustworthiness. We hypothesised a mood-congruent processing, such that individuals would rate pictures of faces more negatively and less trustworthy, the more negative their current mood was. We recruited 42 participants who completed a 7-day AA study with six random prompts per day. At each prompt, participants provided self-reports on momentary mood and completed an emotion rating task and a hypothetical distrust game. Results show that negative momentary mood was significantly associated with higher levels of distrust, but was not significantly associated with more negative emotion ratings. We discuss the incremental value and feasibility of implementing experimental tasks in AA contexts and the opportunities this opens for assessing affective and cognitive processes in natural environments.

Age-related Differences in Expression Recognition of Faces with Direct and Averted Gaze Using Dynamic Stimuli

Background: It is still an open to what extent the ecological validity of face stimuli modulates age-related differences in the recognition of facial expression; and to what extent eye gaze direction may play a role in this process. The present study tested whether age effects in facial expression recognition, also as a function of eye gaze direction, would be less pronounced in dynamic than static face displays.Method: Healthy younger and older adults were asked to recognize emotional expressions of faces with direct or averted eye gaze presented in static and dynamic format.Results: While there were no differences between the age groups in facial expression recognition ability across emotions, when considering individual expressions, age-related differences in the recognition of angry facial expressions were attenuated for dynamic compared to static stimuli.Conclusion: Our findings suggest a moderation effect of dynamic vs. static stimulus format on age-related deficits in the identification of angry facial expressions, suggesting that older adults may be less disadvantaged when recognizing angry facial expressions in more naturalistic displays. Eye gaze direction did not further modulate this effect. Findings from this study qualify and extend previous research and theory on age-related differences in facial expression recognition and have practical impact on study design by supporting the use of dynamic faces in aging research.

Repeated Sessions of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Study Protocol for a Randomized, Double-Blind, and Sham-Controlled Clinical Trial

Background: Social-emotional difficulties are a core symptom of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Accordingly, individuals with ASD have problems with social cognition such as recognizing emotions from other peoples' faces. Various results from functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography studies as well as eye-tracking data reveal a neurophysiological basis of these deficits by linking them to abnormal brain activity. Thus, an intervention targeting the neural origin of ASD impairments seems warranted. A safe method able to influence neural activity is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). This non-invasive brain stimulation method has already demonstrated promising results in several neuropsychiatric disorders in adults and children. The aim of this project is to investigate the effects of tDCS on ASD symptoms and their neural correlates in children and adolescents with ASD. Method: This study is designed as a double-blind, randomized, and sham-controlled trial with a target sample size of 20 male participants (aged 12-17 years) diagnosed with ASD. Before randomization, the participants will be stratified into comorbid depression, comorbid ADHS/conduct disorder, or no-comorbidity groups. The intervention phase comprises 10 sessions of anodal or sham tDCS applied over the left prefrontal cortex within 2 consecutive weeks. To engage the targeted brain regions, participants will perform a social cognition training during the stimulation. TDCS-induced effects on ASD symptoms and involved neural circuits will be investigated through psychological, neurophysiological, imaging, and behavioral data at pre- and post-measurements. Tolerability will be evaluated using a standardized questionnaire. Follow-up assessments 1 and 6 months after the intervention will examine long-lasting effects. Discussion: The results of this study will provide insights into the changeability of social impairments in ASD by investigating social and emotional abilities on different modalities following repeated sessions of anodal tDCS with an intra-simulation training. Furthermore, this trial will elucidate the tolerability and the potential of tDCS as a new treatment approach for ASD in adolescents. Clinical Trial Registration: The study is ongoing and has been registered in the German Registry of Clinical Trials (DRKS00017505) on 02/07/2019.

Affective compatibility with the self modulates the self-prioritisation effect

The "self" shapes the way in which we process the world around us. It makes sense then, that self-related information is reliably prioritised over non self-related information in cognition. How might other factors such as self-compatibility shape the way self-relevant information is prioritised? The present work asks whether affective consistency between the self and arbitrarily self-associated stimuli influences the degree to which self-prioritisation can be observed. To this end, participants were asked to associate themselves with either a positive or a negative concept and to then indicate if a given stimulus (Experiment 1: Emotional faces; Experiment 2: Luminance cues) and an identity label matched. If affective consistency is key to self-prioritisation, negative constructs should dampen self-prioritisation and positive constructs should boost self-prioritisation because the self is universally construed as positive. Indeed, the results of the two experiments indicate that participants who made the negative association had more difficulty confirming whether the stimulus and the label matched than those who made the positive association. The implications of this finding are discussed in terms of "self" theories that span various levels of information processing. The data reveal that self-referential information processing goes beyond a default elevation of priority to the self.

Effects of age and mood on emotional face processing differ depending on the intensity of the facial expression

Research suggests that mood can moderate age differences in recognizing facial emotion. In this study, we examined how an anxious versus calm mood state affected younger and older adults' processing of emotional faces. Older adults had greater difficulty identifying negative emotions, particularly when emotions were displayed at a low intensity level. However, an anxious mood did not affect age differences in emotional face recognition. In contrast, age, emotional intensity, and current mood state all affected the perceived intensity of emotion. The effects of age and mood on perceived emotional intensity were only observed for low intensity facial expressions. When induced into an anxious mood, younger adults perceived threatening emotions (i.e., fear, anger) as more emotionally intense, whereas older adults perceived anger and happiness to be more intense. These findings emphasize the need to consider both internal and external factors when investigating the effects of age on emotional face processing.

Edge-based effective active appearance model for real-time wrinkle detection

Background

Recently, the field of face and facial features has been progressively studied. The features of facial expression have gained increasing attention for related applications. The wrinkle is the most representative feature, and its research and applications have been topics of high interest. Wrinkles play an important role in face feature analysis. They have been widely used in applications, such as age estimation, skin texture classification, expression recognition, and simulation.

Purpose

Existing approaches to the image‐based analysis of wrinkles as texture not as curvilinear discontinuity and wrinkle detection mainly have focused on detecting wrinkles on forehead position, which is usually horizontal linear shapes, while the detection of the nasolabial wrinkle is not well understood due to their variety of shapes and complexity.

Method

In this paper, we present a nasolabial wrinkle line detecting effective algorithm based on the Active appearance model and Hessian filter to improve localization results by creating unique initial shapes of the wrinkle lines for each input face image.

Results

Experimental results show that the proposed method is capable of tracking curve wrinkle lines, thus allowing to detect complexly structured wrinkle lines. This work demonstrates results illustrated the competitiveness of the proposed method in detecting nasolabial wrinkle lines.

Conclusion

In our study, this was introduced the effectiveness of changing the structure of AAM and successfully applied in wrinkle line localizing, although competitive results are achieved by the proposed wrinkle detection method.

Tsinghua facial expression database - A database of facial expressions in Chinese young and older women and men: Development and validation

Perception of facial identity and emotional expressions is fundamental to social interactions. Recently, interest in age associated changes in the processing of faces has grown rapidly. Due to the lack of older faces stimuli, most previous age-comparative studies only used young faces stimuli, which might cause own-age advantage. None of the existing Eastern face stimuli databases contain face images of different age groups (e.g. older adult faces). In this study, a database that comprises images of 110 Chinese young and older adults displaying eight facial emotional expressions (Neutral, Happiness, Anger, Disgust, Surprise, Fear, Content, and Sadness) was constructed. To validate this database, each image was rated on the basis of perceived facial expressions, perceived emotional intensity, and perceived age by two different age groups. Results have shown an overall 79.08% correct identification rate in the validation. Access to the freely available database can be requested by emailing the corresponding authors.

The impact of emotional congruent and emotional neutral context on recognizing complex emotions in older adults

Adding context information has been shown to attenuate the age-related decline of emotion recognition. Specifically, older adults might benefit from emotional congruent context information due to their greater social knowledge. Contrary, emotional neutral context information might impair older adults' performance more due to their decline of inhibitory abilities. Our aim was to examine the age-related decline of complex emotion recognition across three context conditions (emotional congruent, emotional neutral and no context). We hypothesized that emotional congruent context will help older adults to perform at the same level as younger adults and expected worse performance of older adults in the emotional neutral and no context conditions. Twenty-eight older and 28 younger adults watched film clips with complex emotions preceded by a fixation cross (no context), emotional congruent context or emotional neutral context. Emotional neutral context affected older adults' performance more negatively than young adults', whereas emotional congruent improved performance of both young and older adults to a similar extent. Results suggest that emotional congruent context does not eliminate the overall age-related deficit in complex emotion recognition. In contrast, this deficit might be intensified by emotional neutral context.

The same with age: Evidence for age-related similarities in interpersonal accuracy

Interpersonal accuracy refers to the ability to make accurate perceptions about others' social and emotional qualities. Despite this broad definition, the measurement of interpersonal accuracy remains narrow, as most studies focus on the accurate perception of others' emotional states. Moreover, previous research has relied primarily upon traditional tasks consisting of posed, prototypic expressions and behaviors as stimuli. These methodological limitations may constrain our understanding of how different interpersonal perception skills change in adulthood. The present study investigated the extent to which various interpersonal perception skills are worse, better, or remain the same with age using both traditional and nontraditional interpersonal accuracy tasks. One hundred fifty-one adults from 3 age groups (young, middle age, and older) completed a battery of interpersonal accuracy tasks that assessed eight different emotion perception skills and six different social perception skills. Analyses revealed age-related differences in accuracy for five interpersonal perception skills; differences were typically observed between younger and older adults on emotion perception accuracy and between younger and middle-age adults on social perception accuracy. In contrast, almost all remaining interpersonal perception skills-both emotional and social-revealed greater evidence for age-related similarities than differences in Bayesian analyses. Additional exploratory analyses indicated that the observed age differences in interpersonal accuracy may be attributable to individual differences in cognitive ability rather than age. Results provide a nuanced picture of how interpersonal perception skills change in adulthood and provide new methodological tools for a more complete and comprehensive assessment of interpersonal accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

An Adult Developmental Approach to Perceived Facial Attractiveness and Distinctiveness

Attractiveness and distinctiveness constitute facial features with high biological and social relevance. Bringing a developmental perspective to research on social-cognitive face perception, we used a large set of faces taken from the FACES Lifespan Database to examine effects of face and perceiver characteristics on subjective evaluations of attractiveness and distinctiveness in young (20-31 years), middle-aged (44-55 years), and older (70-81 years) men and women. We report novel findings supporting variations by face and perceiver age, in interaction with gender and emotion: although older and middle-aged compared to young perceivers generally rated faces of all ages as more attractive, young perceivers gave relatively higher attractiveness ratings to young compared to middle-aged and older faces. Controlling for variations in attractiveness, older compared to young faces were viewed as more distinctive by young and middle-aged perceivers. Age affected attractiveness more negatively for female than male faces. Furthermore, happy faces were rated as most attractive, while disgusted faces were rated as least attractive, particularly so by middle-aged and older perceivers and for young and female faces. Perceivers largely agreed on distinctiveness ratings for neutral and happy emotions, but older and middle-aged compared to young perceivers rated faces displaying negative emotions as more distinctive. These findings underscore the importance of a lifespan perspective on perception of facial characteristics and suggest possible effects of age on goal-directed perception, social motivation, and in-group bias. This publication makes available picture-specific normative data for experimental stimulus selection.