No.14 Seminar ： Psychological and neural mechanisms involved in processing facial expressions
- Wataru Sato（The Hakubi Center）
- 2010/12/21 4:00pm
- The Hakubi Center (iCeMS West Wing 2F, Seminar Room)
- Japanese
Summary
Communication via emotional facial expressions is indispensable for social interaction among humans. However, the phenomena (behavioral and subjective reactions) involved in facial communication and their neural mechanisms remain unclear.
In this seminar, I present data from our psychology and neuroscience studies investigating this issue. In a psychology study, we found that the perception of emotional facial expressions was more efficient than that of neutral expressions. In another psychology study, we found that spontaneous facial mimicry occurred in response to dynamic facial expressions. In electrophysiology and neuroimaging studies, we found that some brain regions, such as the amygdala and inferior frontal gyrus, were active in response to emotional facial expressions. Based on these data, I constructed a model of the psychological and neural mechanisms involved in the processing of facial expressions.