Abstract

Eye-contact modifies how we perceive emotions and modulates activity in the social brain network. Here, using fMRI, we demonstrate that adding a fixation cross in the eye region of dynamic facial emotional stimuli significantly increases activation in the social brain of healthy, neurotypical participants when compared with activation for the exact same stimuli observed in a free-viewing mode. In addition, using PPI analysis, we show that the degree of amygdala connectivity with the rest of the brain is enhanced for the constrained view for all emotions tested except for fear, and that anxiety and alexithymia modulate the strength of amygdala connectivity for each emotion differently. Finally, we show that autistic traits have opposite effects on amygdala connectivity for fearful and angry emotional expressions, suggesting that these emotions should be treated separately in studies investigating facial emotion processing.

Details

Title
The effect of constraining eye-contact during dynamic emotional face perception—an fMRI study
Author
Hadjikhani, Nouchine 1 ; Zurcher, Nicole R 2 ; Lassalle, Amandine 3 ; Loyse Hippolyte 4 ; Ward, Noreen 2 ; Jakob Åsberg Johnels 5 

 MGH/HMS/HST A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA; Gillberg Neuropsychiatry Center, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg 41119, Sweden 
 MGH/HMS/HST A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA 
 MGH/HMS/HST A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA; ARC, Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge University, Cambridge CB2 8AH, UK 
 Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne 1010, Switzerland 
 Gillberg Neuropsychiatry Center, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg 41119, Sweden; Section for Speech and Language Pathology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg 455 405 30, Sweden 
Pages
1197-1207
Publication year
2017
Publication date
Jul 2017
Publisher
Oxford University Press
ISSN
17495016
e-ISSN
17495024
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3171534969
Copyright
© The Author(s) (2017). 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.