Emotional contagion to vocal smile revealed by combined pupil reactivity and motor resonance.

The interplay between the different components of emotional contagion (i.e. emotional state and facial motor resonance), both during implicit and explicit appraisal of emotion, remains controversial. The aims of this study were (i) to distinguish between these components thanks to vocal smile processing and (ii) to assess how they reflect implicit processes and/or an explicit appraisal loop. Emotional contagion to subtle vocal emotions was studied in 25 adults through motor resonance and Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) reactivity. Facial expressions (fEMG: facial electromyography) and pupil dilation were assessed during the processing and judgement of artificially emotionally modified sentences. fEMG revealed that Zygomaticus major was reactive to the perceived valence of sounds, whereas the activity of Corrugator supercilii reflected explicit judgement. Timing analysis of pupil dilation provided further insight into both the emotional state and the implicit and explicit processing of vocal emotion, showing earlier activity for emotional stimuli than for neutral stimuli, followed by valence-dependent variations and a late judgement-dependent increase in pupil diameter. This innovative combination of different electrophysiological measures shed new light on the debate between central and peripherical views within the framework of emotional contagion.

Establishing the validity and robustness of facial electromyography measures for political science.

Opinion formation and information processing are affected by unconscious affective responses to stimuli-particularly in politics. Yet we still know relatively little about such affective responses and how to measure them. In this study, we focus on emotional valence and examine facial electromyography (fEMG) measures. We demonstrate the validity of these measures, discuss ways to make measurement and analysis more robust, and consider validity trade-offs in experimental design. In doing so, we hope to support scholars in designing studies that will advance scholarship on political attitudes and behavior by incorporating unconscious affective responses to political stimuli-responses that have too often been neglected by political scientists.

Influence of vitamin D on muscle strength and botulinum toxin dosage through surface electromyography.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the influence of patients' serum vitamin D levels on muscle strength characteristics and whether it impacts the durability of botulinum toxin (BT) treatment. METHODS: The muscle strength of the frontal and corrugator muscles was evaluated before and after the application of TB with pre- and post-application control measurements, and at weeks 2, 5 and 12. The effect of vitamin D on muscle strength and its interaction with BT were investigated in 20 patients. The muscle contraction force was measured by surface electromyography. RESULTS: The results revealed statistically significant differences between the frontal measurement groups at weeks 2 and 5, as well as for the corrugator in the same weeks and at week 12. Regarding vitamin D, significant differences were observed only in the initial group with vitamin D > 30 ng/mL compared to < 30 ng/mL for the frontal muscles. Patients with higher levels of vitamin D had higher average muscle strength compared to those with lower levels in all evaluations. CONCLUSIONS: It was observed that vitamin D influences muscle strength and the necessary dosage of BT.

The effects of online facial muscle training with resonance vocalization on mental health in postpartum women: A single-arm pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Mental health problems among expectant and nursing mothers also affect their infants, partners, and families. While physical activity is a potential method for preventing postpartum depression (PPD), it is difficult for postpartum women to find the time for physical exercise. A recent study reported that improving communication between expectant couples can be used as a preventive intervention for PPD, and a systematic review and meta-analysis recently reported decreased facial emotional expressivity in individuals with different non-psychotic disorders. Therefore, we focused on facial muscle training and its potential as prevention for PPD. OBJECTIVE: We evaluated the effectiveness of online facial muscle training with resonance vocalization using real-time video conferencing programs on the PPD of postpartum women at 2-3 months. DESIGN: We recruited 20 postpartum women and used a single-arm, prospective, pre-post design. METHODS: All subjects participated in 30 min of online facial muscle training with resonance vocalization once a week for 4 weeks. The first and final sessions were performed using a real-time remote chat application, and the second and third sessions were performed on demand. Scores on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) as an indicator of PPD were used as the primary outcome. Secondary outcomes included the appearance ratio of a happy facial expression, analyzed using FaceReader™; mood, which was measured using a visual analog scale; and stress level, which was measured using a smartwatch. RESULTS: The training had a significant effect on EPDS, appearance ratio of a happy facial expression, and mood; however, it did not affect physical stress. CONCLUSIONS: In the future, intervention studies with a higher evidence level, such as a crossover randomized controlled trial, are required.

The effects of online facial muscle training with resonance vocalization on postpartum depression: A single-arm pilot studyThe mental health problems of expectant and nursing mothers also affect their infants, partners, and families. However, it is difficult for postpartum women to find the time for physical exercise. So, we evaluated the effectiveness of online facial muscle training with resonance vocalization using real-time video conferencing programs. 20 subjects of postpartum women at two to three months participated in 30 minutes a time, once a week for four weeks. As the result, this training had a significant effect on the subjective mental health, happy facial expression and mood.

Dose and injection site of botulinum toxin type A for gummy smile management: A systematic review and bibliometric analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Botulinum toxin type A (BoNT/A) is an effective non-surgical method for treating gummy smile (GS). This systematic review evaluated the efficacy, duration, and safety of different BoNT/A injections. METHODS: Four electronic databases were searched for relevant literature, generating 1106 references. RESULTS: The review included 13 prospective, controlled clinical trials. The mean pre-injection anterior gingival exposure ranged from 3.5 mm to 6.8 mm, reaching maximum effect at 2-4 weeks post-injection. Most studies indicated complete improvement in gingival exposure post-injection, with gingival exposure reduced to ≤3 mm. The dosage of BoNT/A was determined by the severity of gingival exposure, with effects lasting up to 12-24 weeks. Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi (LLSAN), levator labii superioris (LLS), and zygomaticus minor (ZMi) were the main targeted muscles. Next, bibliometric analysis was conducted to provide an overview of the existing publications on managing gummy smiles. CONCLUSIONS: This data demonstrates that BoNT/A can effectively treat various types of GS triggered by muscle hyperactivity. It is a non-intrusive treatment with significant improvement, high safety, minimal side effects, and high patient satisfaction. This study was preregistered in the Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (CRD42024509183). CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: This study systematically reviewed and compared previous results on efficacy, duration, patient satisfaction, and adverse effects of different botulinum toxin type A doses and injection sites, laying a solid foundation for further studies that use BoNT/A in the management of gummy smiles.

Computer-controlled electrical stimulation of facial muscles by facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES): Hardware and software solutions.

BACKGROUND: Computer controlled electrical stimulation of facial muscles is a promising method to study facial feedback effects, though little guidance is available for new adopters. NEW METHOD: Facial Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (fNMES) offers a spatially and temporally precise means of manipulating facial muscles during experiments, and can be combined with EEG to study the neurological basis of facial feedback effects. Precise delivery of stimulation requires hardware and software solutions to integrate stimulators and a stimulus-presenting computer. We provide open-source hardware schematics and relevant computer code in order to achieve this integration, so as to facilitate the use of fNMES in the laboratory. RESULTS: Hardware schematics are provided for the building of a bespoke control module, which allows researchers to finely control stimulator output whilst participants complete computer tasks. In addition, we published code that new adopters of NMES can use within their experiments to control the module and send event triggers to another computer. These hard- and software solutions were successfully used to investigate the effects of facial muscle activation on felt and perceived emotion. We summarise these findings and discuss the integration of fNMES with EEG and peripheral physiological measures. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS: Our inexpensive hardware solution allows fNMES parameters to be computer controlled, and thus allows to stimulate facial muscles with high precision. This opens up new possibilities to investigate, for example, facial feedback effects. CONCLUSIONS: We provide tools and guidance to build a control module in order to precisely deliver electrical stimulation to facial muscles using a stimulus computer (while recording EEG or other peripheral physiology).

Infants' psychophysiological responses to eye contact with a human and with a humanoid robot.

Eye contact with a human and with a humanoid robot elicits attention- and affect-related psychophysiological responses. However, these responses have mostly been studied in adults, leaving their developmental origin poorly understood. In this study, 114 infants (6-8 months old) viewed direct and averted gaze directions of a live human and an embodied humanoid robot while their heart rate deceleration (attention orienting), skin conductance (affective arousal), and facial muscle activity (affective valence) were measured. In addition, a non-humanoid object (a vase) was used as a control stimulus. Infants' attention orienting was stronger to averted versus direct gaze of a human and a robot, but indifferent to the averted versus direct orientation of the non-humanoid object. Moreover, infants' attention orienting was equally intensive toward a human and a robot, but less intensive toward a non-humanoid object. Affective arousal was insensitive to gaze direction and did not differ between the human, the robot, and the non-humanoid object. Facial muscle responses showed sensitivity to the gaze direction of a human and of a robot but not to the orientation of the non-humanoid object. These results suggest that infants recognize the attentional and affective/affiliative significance not only in a human's gaze but also in a robot's gaze.

Effectiveness of orofacial myofunctional intervention to mitigate facial aging signs: a clinical trial. / Efetividade da intervenção miofuncional orofacial para atenuar sinais do envelhecimento facial: ensaio clínico.

PURPOSE: Propose and verify the efficiency of myofunctional intervention program to attenuate facial aging signs and balance the orofacial functions. METHODS: Thirty women, aged 50 to 60 years, randomly divided into: therapy group (TG) submitted to Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy and electromyographic biofeedback group (EBG), submitted to the same program associated with electromyographic biofeedback for chewing, swallowing, and smiling functions training. Aesthetic and oromyofunctional aspects were assessed from photographs, videos, MBGR Protocol and scales for assessing facial aging signs, described in the literature. 50-minute sessions were held weekly for nine weeks and monthly for six months after washout period. Three assessments, identical to the initial one, were performed in the tenth week, eighth week after washout and conclusion of the research. The participants responded to the Satisfaction Questionnaire on the tenth week. RESULTS: The statistical analysis using the ANOVA, Tukey and Mann Whitney tests, for inter and intragroup comparison, showed that: intervention promoted attenuation of facial aging signs mainly in TG group, balance of chewing and swallowing functions in both groups; there was an impact of electromyographic biofeedback on the degree of participants' satisfaction, greater for EBG; interruption of the program for eight weeks resulted in aesthetic losses, mainly in TG, yet not functional losses, in both groups; the six monthly sessions had a limited impact on overcoming the esthetic losses that occurred after washout. CONCLUSION: The proposed program resulted in attenuation of aging signs, mainly in the TG group and improvement in orofacial functions, in both groups.

OBJETIVO: Propor e verificar a eficiência de um programa de intervenção miofuncional para atenuar sinais do envelhecimento facial e equilibrar as funções orofaciais. MÉTODO: 30 mulheres, entre 50 e 60 anos, divididas aleatoriamente em: grupo terapia (GT), submetido ao programa de terapia miofuncional orofacial e grupo biofeedback eletromiográfico (GBE), submetido ao mesmo programa associado ao biofeedback eletromiográfico para treinamento da mastigação, deglutição e sorriso. Aspectos estéticos e oromiofuncionais foram avaliados a partir da documentação das fotografias e vídeos, do Protocolo de avaliação miofuncional orofacial MBGR e escalas de avaliação dos sinais de envelhecimento facial descritas na literatura. Sessões de 50 minutos foram realizadas semanalmente, durante nove semanas e mensalmente, durante seis meses, após washout. Três avaliações, idênticas à inicial, foram realizadas na décima semana, oitava semana após washout e conclusão da pesquisa. As participantes responderam ao Questionário de Satisfação na décima semana. RESULTADOS: A análise estatística realizada, por meio dos testes ANOVA, Tukey e Mann Whitney, para comparação inter e intragrupos, demonstrou que: houve atenuação dos sinais do envelhecimento facial, principalmente no GT e equilíbrio das funções mastigação e deglutição nos dois grupos; houve impacto do biofeedback eletromiográfico sobre o grau de satisfação das participantes, sendo maior no GBE; a interrupção do programa durante oito semanas resultou em perdas estéticas, principalmente no GT, mas não em perdas funcionais, nos dois grupos; as seis sessões realizadas mensalmente tiveram impacto limitado para superação das perdas estéticas ocorridas após washout. CONCLUSÃO: O programa proposto resultou em atenuação dos sinais de envelhecimento, principalmente no grupo GT e melhoria nas funções orofaciais, nos dois grupos.

Wireless high-resolution surface facial electromyography mask for discrimination of standardized facial expressions in healthy adults.

Wired high resolution surface electromyography (sEMG) using gelled electrodes is a standard method for psycho-physiological, neurological and medical research. Despite its widespread use electrode placement is elaborative, time-consuming, and the overall experimental setting is prone to mechanical artifacts and thus offers little flexibility. Wireless and easy-to-apply technologies would facilitate more accessible examination in a realistic setting. To address this, a novel smart skin technology consisting of wireless dry 16-electrodes was tested. The soft electrode arrays were attached to the right hemiface of 37 healthy adult participants (60% female; 20 to 57 years). The participants performed three runs of a standard set of different facial expression exercises. Linear mixed-effects models utilizing the sEMG amplitudes as outcome measure were used to evaluate differences between the facial movement tasks and runs (separately for every task). The smart electrodes showed specific activation patterns for each of the exercises. 82% of the exercises could be differentiated from each other with very high precision when using the average muscle action of all electrodes. The effects were consistent during the 3 runs. Thus, it appears that wireless high-resolution sEMG analysis with smart skin technology successfully discriminates standard facial expressions in research and clinical settings.

Acquisition and Analysis of Facial Electromyographic Signals for Emotion Recognition.

The objective of the article is to recognize users' emotions by classifying facial electromyographic (EMG) signals. A biomedical signal amplifier, equipped with eight active electrodes positioned in accordance with the Facial Action Coding System, was used to record the EMG signals. These signals were registered during a procedure where users acted out various emotions: joy, sadness, surprise, disgust, anger, fear, and neutral. Recordings were made for 16 users. The mean power of the EMG signals formed the feature set. We utilized these features to train and evaluate various classifiers. In the subject-dependent model, the average classification accuracies were 96.3% for KNN, 94.9% for SVM with a linear kernel, 94.6% for SVM with a cubic kernel, and 93.8% for LDA. In the subject-independent model, the classification results varied depending on the tested user, ranging from 91.4% to 48.6% for the KNN classifier, with an average accuracy of 67.5%. The SVM with a cubic kernel performed slightly worse, achieving an average accuracy of 59.1%, followed by the SVM with a linear kernel at 53.9%, and the LDA classifier at 41.2%. Additionally, the study identified the most effective electrodes for distinguishing between pairs of emotions.

Sensing emotional valence and arousal dynamics through automated facial action unit analysis.

Information about the concordance between dynamic emotional experiences and objective signals is practically useful. Previous studies have shown that valence dynamics can be estimated by recording electrical activity from the muscles in the brows and cheeks. However, whether facial actions based on video data and analyzed without electrodes can be used for sensing emotion dynamics remains unknown. We investigated this issue by recording video of participants' faces and obtaining dynamic valence and arousal ratings while they observed emotional films. Action units (AUs) 04 (i.e., brow lowering) and 12 (i.e., lip-corner pulling), detected through an automated analysis of the video data, were negatively and positively correlated with dynamic ratings of subjective valence, respectively. Several other AUs were also correlated with dynamic valence or arousal ratings. Random forest regression modeling, interpreted using the SHapley Additive exPlanation tool, revealed non-linear associations between the AUs and dynamic ratings of valence or arousal. These results suggest that an automated analysis of facial expression video data can be used to estimate dynamic emotional states, which could be applied in various fields including mental health diagnosis, security monitoring, and education.

Facial Action Unit Representation Based on Self-Supervised Learning With Ensembled Priori Constraints.

Facial action units (AUs) focus on a comprehensive set of atomic facial muscle movements for human expression understanding. Based on supervised learning, discriminative AU representation can be achieved from local patches where the AUs are located. Unfortunately, accurate AU localization and characterization are challenged by the tremendous manual annotations, which limits the performance of AU recognition in realistic scenarios. In this study, we propose an end-to-end self-supervised AU representation learning model (SsupAU) to learn AU representations from unlabeled facial videos. Specifically, the input face is decomposed into six components using auto-encoders: five photo-geometric meaningful components, together with 2D flow field AUs. By constructing the canonical neutral face, posed neutral face, and posed expressional face gradually, these components can be disentangled without supervision, therefore the AU representations can be learned. To construct the canonical neutral face without manually labeled ground truth of emotion state or AU intensity, two priori knowledge based assumptions are proposed: 1) identity consistency, which explores the identical albedos and depths of different frames in a face video, and helps to learn the camera color mode as an extra cue for canonical neutral face recovery. 2) average face, which enables the model to discover a 'neutral facial expression' of the canonical neutral face and decouple the AUs in representation learning. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to design self-supervised AU representation learning method based on the definition of AUs. Substantial experiments on benchmark datasets have demonstrated the superior performance of the proposed work in comparison to other state-of-the-art approaches, as well as an outstanding capability of decomposing input face into meaningful factors for its reconstruction. The code is made available at https://github.com/Sunner4nwpu/SsupAU.

Revealed masks: Facial mimicry after oxytocin administration in forensic psychopathic patients.

Facial mimicry serves as an evolutionarily rooted important interpersonal communication process that touches on the concepts of socialization and empathy. Facial electromyography (EMG) of the corrugator muscle and the zygomaticus muscle was recorded while male forensic psychopathic patients and controls watched morphed angry or happy facial expressions. We tested the hypothesis that psychopathic patients would show weaker short latency facial mimicry (that is, within 600 ms after stimulus onset) than controls. Exclusively in the group of 20 psychopathic patients, we tested in a placebo-controlled crossover within-subject design the hypothesis that oxytocin would enhance short-latency facial mimicry. Compared with placebo, we found no oxytocin-related significant short-latency responses of the corrugator and the zygomaticus. However, compared with 19 normal controls, psychopathic patients in the placebo condition showed significantly weaker short-latency zygomaticus responses to happy faces, while there was a trend toward significantly weaker short-latency corrugator responses to angry faces. These results are consistent with a recent study of facial EMG responses in adolescents with psychopathic traits. We therefore posit a lifetime developmental deficit in psychopathy pertaining short-latency mimicry of emotional facial expressions. Ultimately, this deficit in mimicking angry and happy expressions may hinder the elicitation of empathy, which is known to be impaired in psychopathy.

Recognition of Dynamic Emotional Expressions in Children and Adults and Its Associations with Empathy.

This present study investigates emotion recognition in children and adults and its association with EQ and motor empathy. Overall, 58 children (33 5-6-year-olds, 25 7-9-year-olds) and 61 adults (24 young adults, 37 parents) participated in this study. Each participant received an EQ questionnaire and completed the dynamic emotion expression recognition task, where participants were asked to identify four basic emotions (happy, sad, fearful, and angry) from neutral to fully expressed states, and the motor empathy task, where participants' facial muscle activity was recorded. The results showed that "happy" was the easiest expression for all ages; 5- to 6-year-old children performed equally well as adults. The accuracies for "fearful," "angry," and "sad" expressions were significantly lower in children than in adults. For motor empathy, 7- to 9-year-old children exhibited the highest level of facial muscle activity, while the young adults showed the lowest engagement. Importantly, individual EQ scores positively correlated with the motor empathy index in adults but not in children. In sum, our study echoes the previous literature, showing that the identification of negative emotions is still difficult for children aged 5-9 but that this improves in late childhood. Our results also suggest that stronger facial mimicry responses are positively related to a higher level of empathy in adults.

Emotion regulation flexibility: EEG/EMG predictors and consequences of switching between reappraisal and distraction strategies.

Flexible use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies is central to mental health. To advance our understanding of what drives adaptive strategy-switching decisions, in this preregistered study, we used event-related potentials (late positive potential, LPP and stimulus preceding negativity, SPN) and facial electromyography (EMG corrugator activity) to test the antecedents and consequences of switching to an alternative ER strategy. Participants (N = 63, Mage = 24.8 years, all female) passively watched and then implemented an instructed ER strategy (reappraisal or distraction) in response to high-intensity negative pictures that were either easy or difficult to reinterpret (high or low reappraisal affordance, respectively). Next, they decided to "switch from" or "maintain" the instructed strategy and subsequently implemented the chosen strategy. Reappraisal affordance manipulations successfully induced switching. Regarding antecedents, switching was predicted by the reduced ER efficacy of the current strategy (corrugator, but not LPP). Switching to distraction was additionally predicted by increased responses to the stimulus during passive viewing (corrugator and LPP) and increased anticipatory effort in implementing reappraisal (SPN). Concerning consequences, switching to distraction improved, whereas switching to reappraisal impaired post-choice ER effects (LPP). However, starting with reappraisal was overall more effective than starting with distraction, irrespective of the subsequent decision (corrugator). Our results suggest that switching between ER strategies occurs in accordance with situational demands (stimulus affordances) and is predicted by reduced peripheral physiological ER efficacy. However, only switching to distraction leads to improved regulatory effects. These insights provide neurocognitively grounded starting points for developing interventions targeting ER flexibility.

Infants' facial electromyographic responses to the sight of emotional interpersonal touch.

Adult studies have shown that observed interpersonal touch provides crucial information about others' emotional states. Yet, despite the unique communicative function of touch during development, very little is known about infants' sensitivity to the emotional valence of observed touches. To investigate this issue, we measured facial electromyographic (EMG) activity in response to positive (caress) and negative (scratches) observed touches in a sample of 11-month-old infants. Facial EMG activity was measured over the zygomaticus major (ZM) and corrugator supercilii muscles, respectively involved in positive (i.e., smiling) and negative (i.e., frowning) facial expressions. Results have shown distinct activations of the ZM during the observation of scratches and caresses. In particular, significantly greater activation of the ZM (smiling muscle) emerged specifically in response to the observation of caresses compared to scratches. Our finding suggests that, in infancy, observed affective touches can evoke emotional facial reactions.

Validity based on the response processes of the MMBGR Protocol Infants and Preschoolers: Instructional and Orofacial Myofuncional Clinical History. / Validade baseada nos processos de respostas - Protocolo MMBGR Lactentes e Pré-escolares: Instrutivo e História Clínica Miofuncional Orofacial.

PURPOSE: Present the step of evidence of validity based on the responses to procedures of the MMBGR Protocol Infants and Preschoolers: Instructional and Orofacial Myofunctional Clinical History. METHODS: Study developed according to phonoaudiologic tests validations recommendations. Validity analysis performed based on the process of instrument response. Ten speech therapists, that work on phonoaudiology clinic and/or orofacial myofunctional research on the population with age between 6 to 71 months, participated and applied the MMBGR Protocol Infants and Preschoolers: Instructional and Orofacial Myofunctional Clinical History with those responsible for the children. The speech therapists appraised the instrument applicability via Google®ï¸ electronic forms, containing dichotic and/or multiple-choice questions, and likert scale with space to justify negative answers. The data was tabulated on Microsoft Excel 2016®ï¸ worksheets and analyzed by the content validity index (CVI). The software R Core Team 2022 (Versão 4.2.2) was used. RESULTS: All items from the MMBGR Protocol Infants and Preschoolers: Instructional and Orofacial Myofunctional Clinical History were valid when applied to real contexts. Orofacial Myofunctional Clinic history protocol- IVC 100% in terms of ease of application and filling and usage in professional practice; IVC 90% in terms of usefulness for phonoaudiology clinic. The instructional got IVC 80% in terms of clinic usefulness and 70% regarding to the prior reading necessity to fill the MMBGR Protocol Infants and Preschoolers. CONCLUSION: The Instrucional and Orofacial Myofunctional Clinical History, in the MMBGR Protocol Infants and Preschoolers had its validity proven based on the processes of responses to the usage on phonoaudiology clinic.

OBJETIVO: Apresentar a etapa da evidência de validade baseada nos processos de respostas do Protocolo MMBGR Lactentes e Pré-escolares: Instrutivo e História Clínica Miofuncional Orofacial. MÉTODO: Estudo desenvolvido conforme recomendações para validação de testes em Fonoaudiologia. Realizada análise da validade baseada nos processos de resposta do instrumento. Participaram dez fonoaudiólogos, que atuam em clínica e/ou pesquisa da Motricidade Orofacial com população entre 6 e 71 meses de idade, que aplicaram o Protocolo MMBGR Lactentes e Pré-escolares: Instrutivo e História Clínica Miofuncional Orofacial junto aos responsáveis pelas crianças. Os fonoaudiólogos emitiram apreciação sobre aplicabilidade do instrumento via formulário eletrônico do Google®, contendo questões dicóticas e/ou múltipla escolha, e escala likert com espaço para justificar respostas negativas. Os dados foram tabulados em planilhas Microsoft Excel 2016® e analisados pelo Índice de Validade de Conteúdo (IVC). Utilizado software R Core Team 2022 (Versão 4.2.2). RESULTADOS: Todos os itens do Protocolo MMBGR Lactentes e Pré-escolares: Instrutivo e História Clínica Miofuncional Orofacial foram válidos na aplicação em contexto real. Protocolo de História Clínica Miofuncional Orofacial - IVC 100% quanto à facilidade de aplicação e preenchimento, e uso na prática profissional; e IVC 90% quanto à utilidade para clínica fonoaudiológica. O Instrutivo obteve IVC 80% quanto à utilidade e 70% referente à necessidade de leitura prévia para preenchimento do Protocolo MMBGR Lactentes e Pré-escolares. CONCLUSÃO: O Instrutivo e o Protocolo História Clínica Miofuncional Orofacial, pertencentes ao protocolo MMBGR ­ Lactentes e Pré-escolares tiveram comprovada validade baseada nos processos de resposta, para uso na clínica fonoaudiológica.

Portable Facial Expression System Based on EMG Sensors and Machine Learning Models.

One of the biggest challenges of computers is collecting data from human behavior, such as interpreting human emotions. Traditionally, this process is carried out by computer vision or multichannel electroencephalograms. However, they comprise heavy computational resources, far from final users or where the dataset was made. On the other side, sensors can capture muscle reactions and respond on the spot, preserving information locally without using robust computers. Therefore, the research subject is the recognition of the six primary human emotions using electromyography sensors in a portable device. They are placed on specific facial muscles to detect happiness, anger, surprise, fear, sadness, and disgust. The experimental results showed that when working with the CortexM0 microcontroller, enough computational capabilities were achieved to store a deep learning model with a classification store of 92%. Furthermore, we demonstrate the necessity of collecting data from natural environments and how they need to be processed by a machine learning pipeline.

From masks to muscles: Mapping facial structure of Nycticebus.

Facial musculature in mammals underlies mastication and nonverbal communicative facial displays. Our understanding of primate facial expression comes primarily from haplorrhines (monkeys and apes), while our understanding of strepsirrhine (lemurs and lorises) facial expression remains incomplete. We examined the facial muscles of six specimens from three Nycticebus species (Nycticebus coucang, Nycticebus javanicus, and Nycticebus menagensis) using traditional dissection methodology and novel three-dimensional facial scanning to produce a detailed facial muscle map, and compared these results to another nocturnal strepsirrhine genus, the greater bushbaby (Otolemur spp.). We observed 19 muscles with no differences among Nycticebus specimens. A total of 17 muscles were observed in both Nycticebus and Otolemur, with little difference in attachment and function but some difference in directionality of movement. In the oral region, we note the presence of the depressor anguli oris, which has been reported in other primate species but is absent in Otolemur. The remaining muscle is a previously undescribed constrictor nasalis muscle located on the lateral nasal alar region, likely responsible for constriction of the nares. We propose this newly described muscle may relate to vomeronasal organ functioning and the importance of the use of nasal musculature in olfactory communication. We discuss how this combined methodology enabled imaging of small complex muscles. We further discuss how the facial anatomy of Nycticebus spp. relates to their unique physiology and behavioral ecology.

Optimal processing of surface facial EMG to identify emotional expressions: A data-driven approach.

Surface facial electromyography (EMG) is commonly used to detect emotions from subtle facial expressions. Although there are established procedures for collecting EMG data and some aspects of their processing, there is little agreement among researchers about the optimal way to process the EMG signal, so that the study-unrelated variability (noise) is removed, and the emotion-related variability is best detected. The aim of the current paper was to establish an optimal processing pipeline for EMG data for identifying emotional expressions in facial muscles. We identified the most common processing steps from existing literature and created 72 processing pipelines that represented all the different processing choices. We applied these pipelines to a previously published dataset from a facial mimicry experiment, where 100 adult participants observed happy and sad facial expressions, whilst the activity of their facial muscles, zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii, was recorded with EMG. We used a resampling approach and subsets of the original data to investigate the effect and robustness of different processing choices on the performance of a logistic regression model that predicted the mimicked emotion (happy/sad) from the EMG signal. In addition, we used a random forest model to identify the most important processing steps for the sensitivity of the logistic regression model. Three processing steps were found to be most impactful: baseline correction, standardisation within muscles, and standardisation within subjects. The chosen feature of interest and the signal averaging had little influence on the sensitivity to the effect. We recommend an optimal processing pipeline, share our code and data, and provide a step-by-step walkthrough for researchers.