Facial Expressions: How the Brain Processes Emotion

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As you all know, the amygdala is responsible for mostly negative emotions. In the article, Facial Expressions: How the Brain Processes Emotion, researchers found that the amygdala is involved in making judgments about intense and/or extreme emotions. The research was done in Los Angeles by the Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Ralph Adolphs and The Professor of Biology, Ueli Rutishauser. They measured the activity of cells in patients while they were shown images that had intense fear or happiness. They were asked which degree of happiness or fear is being shown and Adolphs and his group measured the activity in the brain in relation to different degrees of emotions.

The amygdala fires electrical "spikes" when we see faces. They discovered two separate neurons that responded to these emotions. The first neuron is the emotion-tracking neurons. These neurons detect a single emotion such as anger, happiness or fear. If the emotions were intense, the amygdala would fire more spikes in reaction to seeing intense fear versus lower spikes if seeing a neutral emotion. The other neuron is the ambiguity-neurons which indicate the ambiguity of the perceived emotion. Discovering the ambiguity-neurons is groundbreaking because researchers were able to understand how the amygdala plays a part in decision making. When showed ambiguous faces, the patients weren't able to tell the difference between the different emotions. A study was then conducted in separate groups of participants using fMRI to study emotion judgments and how the amygdala plays a part. The results showed that there was an extremely low threshold when participants had to decide if a face was fearful. It also supported the findings of the first study when measuring emotion intensity and ambiguity.

These findings may be a start of finding treatment for patients with autism or PTSD, that have an overactive amygdala. I find it interesting that there are separate neurons that respond to experiencing/seeing each emotions. My wonder is how would this treatment of electrical stimulation of the amygdala help the autistic population with their social skills. Will it help them be able to process their emotions better while acting on it as well? I can see how someone with PTSD will benefit. I think that they will be able to redirect their attention to different stimuli other than the trauma they have experienced if this treatment is in fact valid. This research did not mention how the amygdala works with and cortices. In class, DJ explained to us that the ventrolateral PFC is responsible for inhibiting context-appropriate responses. It would be interesting to have a conversation about how perception can change those responses, such as how one perceives a face.

http://neurosciencenews.com/emotion-facial-expressions-6495/

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