Electrophysiological correlates of the efficient detection of emotional facial expressions in adults with and without pervasive developmental disorders

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25885049
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: SAWADA Reiko 京都大学, 医学(系)研究科(研究院), 研究員 (20713043)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-08-30 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 感情 / 表情検出 / 事象関連電位 / EPN / 広汎性発達障害

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In order to explore behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying rapid detection of emotional facial expressions, we conducted two studies. In both studies, the participants performed a visual search task in which they detected the normal emotional facial expressions of anger and happiness or emotionally neutral expressions (called 'anti-expressions') used as control stimuli, within crowds of neutral expressions. The event-related potential study indicates that the early posterior negativity (EPN) at 200-400 ms may be involved in the rapid detection of emotional facial expressions. The behavioral study in participants with and without pervasive development disorders (PDD) indicates that the participants with PDD showed a different pattern in reaction time to detect emotional facial expressions compared with the participants without PDD.

Free Research Field

認知神経科学