Abstract

Facial expressions can trigger emotions: when we smile we feel happy, when we frown we feel sad. However, the mimicry literature also shows that we feel happy when our interaction partner behaves the way we do. Thus what happens if we express our sadness and we perceive somebody who is imitating us? In the current study, participants were presented with either happy or sad faces, while expressing one of these emotions themselves. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure neural responses on trials where the observed emotion was either congruent or incongruent with the expressed emotion. Our results indicate that being in a congruent emotional state, irrespective of the emotion, activates the medial orbitofrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, brain areas that have been associated with positive feelings and reward processing. However, incongruent emotional states activated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as well as posterior superior temporal gyrus/sulcus, both playing a role in conflict processing.

Details

Title
Neural correlates of emotional synchrony
Author
Kühn, Simone 1 ; Müller, Barbara C N 2 ; Andries van der Leij 2 ; Dijksterhuis, Ap 2 ; Brass, Marcel 2 ; van Baaren, Rick B 2 

 Ghent University, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Department of Experimental Psychology and Clinical Experimental Psychology, Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium, 2 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London. WC1N 3AR, UK, and 3 Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, Netherlands; Ghent University, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Department of Experimental Psychology and Clinical Experimental Psychology, Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium, 2 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London. WC1N 3AR, UK, and 3 Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, Netherlands 
 Ghent University, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Department of Experimental Psychology and Clinical Experimental Psychology, Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium, 2 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London. WC1N 3AR, UK, and 3 Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, Netherlands 
Pages
368-374
Publication year
2011
Publication date
Jun 2011
Publisher
Oxford University Press
ISSN
17495016
e-ISSN
17495024
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3171552735
Copyright
© The Author(s) (2010). Published by Oxford University Press. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.