Effect of facial emotion recognition learning transfers across emotions.

Introduction: Perceptual learning of facial expression is shown specific to the train expression, indicating separate encoding of the emotional contents in different expressions. However, little is known about the specificity of emotional recognition training with the visual search paradigm and the sensitivity of learning to near-threshold stimuli. Methods: In the present study, we adopted a visual search paradigm to measure the recognition of facial expressions. In Experiment 1 (Exp1), Experiment 2 (Exp2), and Experiment 3 (Exp3), subjects were trained for 8 days to search for a target expression in an array of faces presented for 950 ms, 350 ms, and 50 ms, respectively. In Experiment 4 (Exp4), we trained subjects to search for a target of a triangle, and tested them with the task of facial expression search. Before and after the training, subjects were tested on the trained and untrained facial expressions which were presented for 950 ms, 650 ms, 350 ms, or 50 ms. Results: The results showed that training led to large improvements in the recognition of facial emotions only if the faces were presented long enough (Exp1: 85.89%; Exp2: 46.05%). Furthermore, the training effect could transfer to the untrained expression. However, when the faces were presented briefly (Exp3), the training effect was small (6.38%). In Exp4, the results indicated that the training effect could not transfer across categories. Discussion: Our findings revealed cross-emotion transfer for facial expression recognition training in a visual search task. In addition, learning hardly affects the recognition of near-threshold expressions.

Mindfulness training modifies attentional bias to facial emotion and emotional symptoms.

BACKGROUND: Mindfulness training has been shown to improve emotional symptoms such as anxiety and depressive symptoms. However, its cognitive-behavioral mechanism is still unclear. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of mindfulness training on attention to emotional faces and its role in the improvement in emotional symptoms. METHODS: Eighty participants were recruited and randomly divided into a training group (n = 40) that received eight weeks of mindfulness training and a control group (n = 40) that attended a mindfulness lecture. Before training (T1), immediately after training (T2), and three months after training (T3), all participants were asked to complete the Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) and the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) to assess their emotional symptoms and a modified dot-probe task to measure their attention to emotional faces. RESULTS: Mindfulness training significantly reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms at both T2 and T3. After training, the attentional bias toward happy faces increased, while the attentional bias toward sad faces decreased in the training group compared with the control group. Mediation analysis showed that the improvement in attentional bias toward sad faces partially mediated the effect of mindfulness training on depression at T2. LIMITATIONS: Our participants were not a clinical sample (i.e., were not diagnosed with emotional disorders), and the time course of attention components was difficult to examine in the present study. CONCLUSIONS: Mindfulness training can stably reduce anxious and depressive symptoms. However, it may have a temporary effect on attentional bias toward facial emotions, which plays a limited role in improving emotional symptoms.

Individualized prediction of trait self-control from whole-brain functional connectivity.

Self-control is a core psychological construct for human beings and it plays a crucial role in the adaptation to society and achievement of success and happiness for individuals. Although progress has been made in behavioral studies examining self-control, its neural mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we employed a machine-learning approach-relevance vector regression (RVR) to explore the potential predictive power of intrinsic functional connections to trait self-control in a large sample (N = 390). We used resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) to explore whole-brain functional connectivity patterns characteristic of 390 healthy adults and to confirm the effectiveness of RVR in predicting individual trait self-control scores. A set of connections across multiple neural networks that significantly predicted individual differences were identified, including the classic control network (e.g., fronto-parietal network (FPN), salience network (SAL)), the sensorimotor network (Mot), and the medial frontal network (MF). Key nodes that contributed to the predictive model included the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), middle frontal gyrus (MFG), anterior cingulate and paracingulate gyri, inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) that have been associated with trait self-control. Our findings further assert that self-control is a multidimensional construct rooted in the interactions between multiple neural networks.

Cognitive deficits for facial emotions among male adolescent delinquents with conduct disorder.

According to the social-cognitive theory and the social-information-processing theory, individuals with conduct disorder, a persistent and repetitive pattern of problematic behavior, might have cognitive biases toward hostile facial expressions. However, according to the optimal stimulation/arousal theory, the stimulation-seeking theory and the fearlessness theory, individuals with conduct disorder might have less fear and show less response to hostile or threatening facial expressions. To reconcile the discrepancy, we examined the cognitive biases including attentional processing and working memory processing to emotional faces among adolescents with conduct disorder. 35 male adolescent delinquents with conduct disorder and 35 age-matched delinquents without conduct disorder completed a visual search task and a delayed-match-to-sample task to examine their attentional processing and working memory processing for sad, angry, happy, and fearful faces, respectively. It was found that conduct disordered individuals searched angry and fearful faces, rather than sad and happy faces, more slowly than individuals without conduct disorder. However, no difference in mnemonic processing for facial emotions was found between groups. The results indicated that male adolescent delinquents with conduct disorder showed deficits in attentional orientation to hostile and threatening faces, supporting the optimal stimulation/arousal theory, the stimulation-seeking theory and the fearlessness theory, but not the social-cognitive theory.

Prediction of Facial Emotion Recognition Ability in Patients With First-Episode Schizophrenia Using Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuation-Based Support Vector Regression Model.

Objective: There were few studies that had attempted to predict facial emotion recognition (FER) ability at the individual level in schizophrenia patients. In this study, we developed a model for the prediction of FER ability in Chinese Han patients with the first-episode schizophrenia (FSZ). Materials and Methods: A total of 28 patients with FSZ and 33 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. All subjects underwent resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI). The amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) method was selected to analyze voxel-level spontaneous neuronal activity. The visual search experiments were selected to evaluate the FER, while the support vector regression (SVR) model was selected to develop a model based on individual rs-fMRI brain scan. Results: Group difference in FER ability showed statistical significance (P < 0.05). In FSZ patients, increased mALFF value were observed in the limbic lobe and frontal lobe, while decreased mALFF value were observed in the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, and occipital lobe (P < 0.05, AlphaSim correction). SVR analysis showed that abnormal spontaneous activity in multiple brain regions, especially in the right posterior cingulate, right precuneus, and left calcarine could effectively predict fearful FER accuracy (r = 0.64, P = 0.011) in patients. Conclusion: Our study provides an evidence that abnormal spontaneous activity in specific brain regions may serve as a predictive biomarker for fearful FER ability in schizophrenia.

The impact of mindfulness training on supportive communication, emotional intelligence, and human caring among nursing students.

PURPOSE: This study was aimed to investigate the impact of mindfulness training on supportive communication and human caring ability among nursing students. DESIGN AND METHODS: Sixty nursing students were randomly divided into the mindfulness group who accepted 8-week mindfulness training and the control group who attended two 2-h lectures about mindfulness in 8 weeks. All of them completed the Supporting Communication Scale (SCS), Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS), and Caring Ability Inventory (CAI) before training (T1), after it (T2), and at 3-month follow-up (T3). FINDINGS: The mindfulness group showed higher scores on SCS, EIS, and CAI than the control group at both T2 and T3, and improvements in emotional intelligence partially mediated the training effects on supportive communication. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Mindfulness training could be applied to improve the abilities of communication and human caring during nursing education.

The Effect of Empathy on the Attentional Processing of Painful and Emotional Stimuli.

BACKGROUND: Empathy is shown to affect the attentional processing of painful stimuli and emotional stimuli. However, whether the attentional effects on emotional stimuli depend on emotional valence and the nature of the relationship between the attentional effects on different stimuli are still unknown. METHODS: In the present study, 25 high-empathy (HE) participants and 25 low-empathy (LE) participants were recruited to perform dot-probe tasks on painful stimuli and emotional stimuli. RESULTS: The results showed that HE individuals had weak attentional disengagement to painful pictures. More importantly, regarding emotional pictures, HE individuals showed attentional avoidance to negative emotion pictures, while LE individuals showed attentional bias to positive emotion pictures. Correlation analysis showed that the attentional bias score and attentional disengagement score were only associated with each other within the same category of stimuli (painful, positive or negative stimuli). CONCLUSION: These results revealed that HE individuals mainly showed attentional avoidance to negative stimuli, while LE individuals mainly showed attentional bias to positive stimuli.

Cortical Pathways or Mechanism in the Face Inversion Effect in Patients with First-Episode Schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE: Impaired face perception is considered as a hallmark of social disability in schizophrenia. It is widely believed that inverted faces and upright faces are processed by distinct mechanisms. Previous studies have identified that individuals with schizophrenia display poorer face processing than controls. However, the mechanisms underlying the face inversion effect (FIE) in patients with first-episode schizophrenia (FSZ) remain unclear. METHODS: We designed an fMRI task to investigate the FIE mechanism in patients with schizophrenia. Thirty-four patients with FSZ and thirty-five healthy controls (CON) underwent task-related fMRI scanning, clinical assessment, anhedonia experience examination, and social function and cognitive function evaluation. RESULTS: The patients with FSZ exhibited distinct functional activity regarding upright and inverted face processing within the cortical face and non-face network. These results suggest that the differences in quantitative processing might mediate the FIE in schizophrenia. Compared with controls, affected patients showed impairments in processing both upright and inverted faces; and for these patients with FSZ, upright face processing was associated with more severe and broader impairment than inverted face processing. Reduced response in the left middle occipital gyrus for upright face processing was related to poorer performance of social function outcomes evaluated using the Personal and Social Performance Scale. CONCLUSION: Our data suggested that patients with FSZ exhibited similar performance in processing inverted faces and upright faces, but were less efficient than controls; and for these patients, inverted faces are processed less efficiently than upright faces. We also provided a clue that the mechanism under abnormal FIE might be related to an aberrant activation of non-face-selective areas instead of abnormal activation of face-specific areas in patients with schizophrenia. Finally, our study indicated that the neural pathway for upright recognition might be relevant in determining the functional outcomes of this devastating disorder.

Face and object visual working memory deficits in first-episode schizophrenia correlate with multiple neurocognitive performances.

BACKGROUND: Working memory (WM) deficit is considered a core feature and cognitive biomarker in patients with schizophrenia. Several studies have reported prominent object WM deficits in patients with schizophrenia, suggesting that visual WM in these patients extends to non-spatial domains. However, whether non-spatial WM is similarly affected remains unclear. AIM: This study primarily aimed to identify the processing of visual object WM in patients with first-episode schizophrenia. METHODS: The study included 36 patients with first-episode schizophrenia and 35 healthy controls. Visual object WM capacity, including face and house WM capacity, was assessed by means of delayed matching-to-sample visual WM tasks, in which participants must distribute memory so that they can discriminate a target sample. We specifically examined their anhedonia experience by the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale and the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale. Cognitive performance was measured by the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). RESULTS: Both face and house WM capacity was significantly impaired in patients with schizophrenia. For both tasks, the performance of all the subjects was worse under the high-load condition than under the low-load condition. We found that WM capacity was highly positively correlated with the performance on RBANS total scores (r=-0.528, p=0.005), RBANS delayed memory scores (r=-0.470, p=0.013), RBANS attention scores (r=-0.584, p=0.001), RBANS language scores (r=-0.448, p=0.019), Trail-Making Test: Part A raw scores (r=0.465, p=0.015) and simple IQ total scores (r=-0.538, p=0.005), and correlated with scores of the vocabulary test (r=-0.490, p=0.011) and scores of the Block Diagram Test (r=-0.426, p=0.027) in schizophrenia. No significant correlations were observed between WM capacity and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Our research found that visual object WM capacity is dramatically impaired in patients with schizophrenia and is strongly correlated with other measures of cognition, suggesting a mechanism that is critical in explaining a portion of the broad cognitive deficits observed in schizophrenia.

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Drives the Prioritization of Self-Associated Stimuli in Working Memory.

Humans show a pervasive bias for processing self- over other-related information, including in working memory (WM), where people prioritize the maintenance of self- (over other-) associated cues. To elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying this self-bias, we paired a self- versus other-associated spatial WM task with fMRI and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of human participants of both sexes. Maintaining self- (over other-) associated cues resulted in enhanced activity in classic WM regions (frontoparietal cortex), and in superior multivoxel pattern decoding of the cue locations from visual cortex. Moreover, ventromedial PFC (VMPFC) displayed enhanced functional connectivity with WM regions during maintenance of self-associated cues, which predicted individuals' behavioral self-prioritization effects. In a follow-up tDCS experiment, we targeted VMPFC with excitatory (anodal), inhibitory (cathodal), or sham tDCS. Cathodal tDCS eliminated the self-prioritization effect. These findings provide strong converging evidence for a causal role of VMPFC in driving self-prioritization effects in WM and provide a unique window into the interaction between social, self-referential processing and high-level cognitive control processes.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT People have a strong tendency to attend to self-related stimuli, such as their names. This self-bias extends to the automatic prioritization of arbitrarily self-associated stimuli held in working memory. Since working memory is central to high-level cognition, this bias could influence how we make decisions. It is therefore important to understand the underlying brain mechanisms. Here, we used neuroimaging and noninvasive neurostimulation techniques to show that the source of self-bias in working memory is the ventromedial PFC, which modulates activity in frontoparietal brain regions to produce prioritized representations of self-associated stimuli in sensory cortex. This work thus reveals a brain circuit underlying the socially motivated (self-referential) biasing of high-level cognitive processing.

Widowhood Impairs Emotional Cognition Among Elderly.

BACKGROUND: The negative impacts of spousal bereavement on the emotional health of the elderly (e.g., depression and anxiety) have been revealed. However, whether widowhood impairs emotional cognition among the elderly is less known. The purpose of this study is to reveal the emotional cognitive deficits among the widowed elderly. METHODS: In this study, we recruited 44 widowed elderly (WE) and 44 elder couples (non-widowed elderly, NWE) and examined their emotional cognition including attention and visual working memory, which were measured by the visual search task and delayed-match-to-sample task, respectively. Three kinds of emotional faces (i.e., sad, angry, and happy) were adopted as the attentional or mnemonic targets. RESULTS: It revealed that WE had a general deficit in search efficiency across emotional types, while they showed mnemonic deficits in negative faces but not positive faces. Furthermore, the modeling analysis revealed that the level of depression or state anxiety of the elderly moderated the effects of widowhood on the deficits of mnemonic processing, i.e., the deficits were only evident among WE with the high level of depression or state anxiety. CONCLUSION: These findings reveal the attentional deficits in sad, angry, and happy faces and the mnemonic deficits in sad and angry faces among elderly who suffer from widowhood and point out the important role of emotional problems such as depression and state anxiety in modulating these emotional cognitive deficits.

Childhood Maltreatment Is Associated With Aggression Among Male Juvenile Delinquents in China: The Mediating Effects of Callous-Unemotional Traits and Self-Control.

Background: Aggression is an important risk factor for delinquency and crime in adolescents. Previous studies have indicated that childhood maltreatment plays an important role in the development of aggression. However, whether the effect could be mediated by other factors is still unknown. Evidence suggests that callous-unemotional (CU) traits and self-control may be candidate mediators in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression. Methods: A total of 585 male juvenile delinquents from China were recruited for the present study. We measured self-reported childhood maltreatment, CU traits, self-control, and aggression with the short form of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-SF), the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU), the Self-Control Scale (SCS), and the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ), respectively. Furthermore, we constructed multiple mediation models to investigate the mediating effects of CU traits and self-control on the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression. Childhood maltreatment and aggression were entered into the model as the independent and dependent variables, respectively, and CU traits and self-control were treated as the mediating variables. In addition, the moderating role of self-control in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression was tested by constructing a moderation model. Results: Correlation analysis showed significant positive correlations among childhood maltreatment, CU traits, and aggression (all r values > 0.31, P values < 0.01), and self-control was negatively correlated with these three factors (all r values < -0.32, P values < 0.01). Mediation analyses showed that the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression was completely and sequentially mediated by the factors of CU traits and self-control (indirect effect = 0.31, P < 0.001). In addition, the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression could also be completely mediated by CU traits (indirect effect = 0.24, P < 0.001) and self-control (indirect effect = 0.26, P < 0.001) separately. Conclusion: Our results indicate that, in a sample of male juvenile delinquents in China, the relationship between childhood maltreatment and adolescent aggression was found to be mediated by CU traits and self-control, which may shed light on the development of aggression among male juvenile delinquents.

Visual Attentional Bias Induced by Face Direction.

The effect of spatial cueing on eye gaze has been confirmed by a large number of studies, but the effect of spatial cueing on face direction and the impact of eye gaze on this effect are less known. In four experiments, we investigated the attentional bias induced by face direction. A modified paradigm of spatial cueing was adopted with stimuli that were static faces rotated by 90 or 45° to the left or right from the frontal view. To control the effect of eyes, face stimuli with eyes open and those with eyes closed were both used in each experiment. In Experiment 1, the facial cue (face rotated by 90°) and target were presented simultaneously, and the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the facial cue and target was set to be 300, 600, and 900 ms in Experiments 2 (face rotated by 90°), 3 (inverted face rotated by 90°), and 4 (face rotated by 45°), respectively. The response time of detecting the target position was recorded. The spatial cueing effects were nonsignificant in Experiment 1, in which the cue and target were presented simultaneously. However, significant spatial cueing effects of face direction were found in Experiments 2 and 3, in which the upright and inverted faces rotated by 90° were adopted, respectively, in both the eyes open and eyes closed conditions. In addition, we did not find an effect of spatial cueing with the face rotated by 45° (Experiment 4). Our results indicate that face direction can bias visual attention. This effect might not be based on the holistic processing of faces.

Mechanisms for the Cognitive Processing of Attractiveness in Adult and Infant Faces: From the Evolutionary Perspective.

Research on the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness has mainly focused on adult faces. Recent studies have revealed that the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness in infant faces is not the same as that in adult faces. Therefore, it is necessary to summarize the evidence on the processing of facial attractiveness in each kind of face and compare their underlying mechanisms. In this paper, we first reviewed studies on the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness in adult faces, including attentional and mnemonic processing, and then discussed the underlying mechanisms. Afterward, studies on facial attractiveness in infant faces were reviewed, and the underlying mechanisms were also discussed. Direct comparisons between the two kinds of cognitive processing were subsequently made. The results showed that the mechanisms for the processing of attractiveness in adult faces and infant faces are mainly motivated by the perspectives of mate selection and raising offspring, respectively, in evolutionary psychology. Finally, directions for future research are proposed.

Temporal variability of brain networks predicts individual differences in bistable perception.

When ambiguous visual stimuli are presented to the eyes, conscious perception can spontaneously alternate across the competing interpretations - which was known as bistable perception. The spontaneous alternation of perception might indicate a connection between bistable perception and the dynamic interaction of brain networks. Here, we hypothesized that individual differences in perceptual dynamics may be reflected in dynamics of spontaneous neural activities. To test this idea, we investigated the relationship between the percept duration and the reconfiguration patterns of dynamic brain networks as measured by the functional connectivity (FC) during the resting state. Firstly, we found that individual difference of percept duration is associated with the temporal variability of the brain regions which were previously reported in studies of bistable perception, including anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), superior parietal lobule (SPL), inferior parietal lobule (IPL), precuneus, insula, and V5. Secondly, there is a positive relationship between the temporal variability within the frontal-parietal network (FPN) and the percept duration. Thirdly, our results indicated that individual difference of bistable perception was related to the dynamic interaction between large-scale functional networks including default mode network (DMN), FPN, cingulo-opercular network (CON), dorsal attention network (DAN), salience network (SN), memory retrieval network (MRN). Altogether, our results demonstrated that inter-individual variability in bistable perception was associated with dynamic coupling of brain regions and networks involved in primary visual processing, spatial attention, and cognitive control.

The Effect of Visual Working Memory Training Could Transfer Across Stimuli.

BACKGROUND: Working memory, as a fundamental cognitive ability, has been shown to improve with learning. However, little is known about the learning effect of visual working memory training and its generalization to other stimuli and tasks. METHODS: In the present study, we utilized a delayed match-to-sample task to measure the working memory of faces and houses. Subjects were trained ten days on this task and were tested on the same task and a memory span task before and after the training. RESULTS: The results showed that training significantly increased the accuracy of visual working memory. More importantly, such a learning effect could partly transfer to a visual working memory task with different stimuli. However, the learning effect may not transfer to a memory span task. CONCLUSION: Our findings demonstrate that training might influence the common processing of different stimuli in a visual working memory task.

How Does Fearful Emotion Affect Visual Attention?

It has long been suggested that emotion, especially threatening emotion, facilitates early visual perception to promote adaptive responses to potential threats in the environment. Here, we tested whether and how fearful emotion affects the basic visual ability of visual acuity. An adapted Posner's spatial cueing task was employed, with fearful and neutral faces as cues and a Vernier discrimination task as the probe. The time course of the emotional attention effect was examined by varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of the cue and probe. Two independent experiments (Experiments 1 and 3) consistently demonstrated that the brief presentation of a fearful face increased visual acuity at its location. The facilitation of perceptual sensitivity was detected at an SOA around 300 ms when the face cues were presented for both 250 ms (Experiment 1) and 150 ms (Experiment 3). This effect cannot be explained by physical differences between the fearful and neutral faces because no improvement was found when the faces were presented inverted (Experiment 2). In the last experiment (Experiment 4), the face cues were flashed very briefly (17 ms), and we did not find any improvement induced by the fearful face. Overall, we provide evidence that emotion interacts with attention to affect basic visual functions.

The Different Brain Mechanisms of Object and Spatial Working Memory: Voxel-Based Morphometry and Resting-State Functional Connectivity.

In working memory (WM), the ability to concurrently integrate different types of information and to maintain or manipulate them promotes the flow of ongoing tasks. WM is a key component of normal human cognition. In this study, we applied a combined voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analysis to investigate the relationship between the ability of object and spatial working memory (WM), and regional gray matter density (GMD), as well as intrinsic functional connectivity. The VBM analysis showed a positive correlation between the individual difference of object WM and GMD in the right middle occipital gyrus (MOG) and the left superior temporal gyrus (STG), which are responsible for coding object information and processing the shape of an object. The individual difference of the spatial WM was positively related to GMD in the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) located in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), which confirmed that it is an important region for memory stores and maintains WM spatial representations. Further functional connectivity analysis revealed that the individual difference of object WM was significantly correlated with the rsFC of right intraparietal sulcus (IPS) - left postcentral gyrus (PostCG)/right precentral gyrus (PreCG)/left Supplementary Motor Area (SMA). While the capacity of spatial WM was significantly associated with the FC strength of the left dlPFC - left precuneus, right dlPFC - right MFG, and the left superior frontal sulcus (SFS) - left SMA/ right inferior parietal lobe (IPL). Our findings suggest that object WM is associated with the structure and functional organization of the brain regions involved in the ventral pathway (occipital - temporal regions) and the capacity of spatial WM is related to the dorsal pathway (frontal - parietal regions).

Modulations of emotional attention and spatial attention on human visual cortical activities.

Background: Spatial attention could enhance the neural activities of attended locations in human visual cortex. As a salient stimulus, emotional image could enhance the responses in amygdala and visual areas. However, few studies examined the interaction of the attentional effects induced by emotional stimuli and spatial cues on the neural responses in visual areas. Methods: In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the combined and separated effects of emotional image and spatial cue on the activities in human visual areas. A revised Posner cueing paradigm was utilized. Each participant viewed a fearful image and a peaceful image simultaneously in left and right visual fields. A spatial cue of two dots was then presented in one of the image positions. In this manner, the attentional effects for emotional image and spatial cue could be isolated and combined. Results: The results showed that spatial cue enhanced the responses in V4, intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and lateral occipital area (LO), while emotional image could enhance the responses in V3, V4 and LO. Importantly, no significant interactions were found in any of the visual areas. Conclusion: Our results indicate that the two kinds of attentional modulation might not be affected by each other. These findings shed light on the neural mechanism of the emotional attention.

Selective attentional biases towards a self-related facial feature among orthognathic patients.

The present study aimed to determine what kind of face and which area of the face (eyes or mouth) rapidly capture attention among patients with dentomaxillofacial deformities (DDs). In the present experiments, faces were categorized as highly or lowly attractive (HA and LA, respectively) and as a face with dentomaxillofacial deformities (DD face). A dot-probe task and a change-detection task were utilized to examine the attentional bias to the faces and facial features, respectively. In Study 1, we found that DD patients showed an attentional bias to DD male faces compared with HA male faces, while controls showed an opposite attentional pattern. In Study 2, we found that patients responded faster to the changes in the mouths of DD male faces than those of HA and LA faces. Moreover, patients paid less attention to the mouths of HA faces than to the region of the eyes, and they paid less attention than did the controls. These results indicated that DD patients selectively directed their attention to DD male faces and the mouths of these faces. These findings were not evident in female faces. Furthermore, patients showed avoidance of the mouths of HA faces regardless of the gender of the faces.