The Explicit And Implicit Recognition Of Dynamic Facial Expressions In Healthy Chinese Han Females And Patients Of Major Depression: An FMRI Study

Experiment 1: The Primary development of Chinese FacialExpression Video SystemObjective: To develop the Chinese Facial Expression Video System(CFEVS) for future emotion researchMethods: Different facial expression video slices of happiness, sadness,surprising, fear, anger, disgust at three levels of intensity and neutral(including non-emotional and chewing) were recorded. After twicepreliminary screening, 50 Chinese university students were asked to rate thecategory, valence, arousal of the residual video slices and the appearance ofactors and actresses by self-report. Those video slices with high consistency ofcategory, valence, arousal and with concordance of category and valence werecollected to make up of CFEVS. The effects of raters' gender and performers'appearance on valence and arousal were analyzed.Results: 61 happy faces (18 male' and 43 female'), 51 sad faces(23 male'and 28 female'), 30 non-emotional neutral(13 male' and 17 female') and 24chewing neutral(7 male' and 17 female') were recruited in CFEVS. Scatter plot showed that the score distribution on the dimension of valence andarousal was wide in CFEVS and the results of ANOVA indicated the effects ofraters' gender and performers' appearance on the scores of valence and arousalwere correlated with expressional category.Conclusion: The Chinese Facial Expression Video System has beenpreliminarily developed though need to be consummated, and the gender ofraters and the appearance of performers are perhaps important influencingfactors to the results of emotional research. Experiment 2: Neural substrates for explicit and implicitrecognition of dynamic facial expressions in Chinese healthy females:a functional magnetic resonance studyObjective: To explore neural correlates for the explicit and implicitrecognition of dynamic facial expression videos using event-related functionalmagnetic resonance imaging.Methods: Fifteen Chinese nationality healthy right-handed adult femalevolunteers underwent blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) fMRI whilerecognizing the emotional type and gender of happy, sad, neutral emotionalfaces and fixation cross videos.Results:(1) In comparison with fixation cross, explicit recognition of neutralfaces activated right middle frontal gyrus (BAg), left precentral gyrus(BA6),left cingulated gyrus(BA24) and left postcentral gyrus(BA2), and implicitrecognition of neutral faces activated right precentral gyrus(BA4), rightcuneus(BA19), right lingual gyrus(BA18), right middle occipital gyrus(BA18),left precuneus(BA31), bilateral inferior parietal lobule(BA40), leftprecuneus(BA39), right precuneus(BA7), right inferior temporal gyrus(BA20),left middle temporal gyrus(BA22) and right cingulated gyrus.(2) In comparison of neutral faces, explicit recognition of happy faceselicited increased activation in the left middle frontal gyrus(BAS), left middlegyrus(BA46), right cuneus(BA7), left cuneus(BA18), right inferior occipital gyrus(BA18), left lingual gyrus(BA18), right middle temporal gyrus(BA21),left middle temporal gyrus(BA39), left transverse temporal gyrus(BA41) andleft putamen, and implicit recognition of happy faces activated right inferiortemporal gyrus(BA37) and right middle temporal gyrus(BA22).(3) In comparison of neutral faces, explicit recognition of sad faceselicited increased activation in the right uncus(BA28), right fusiformgyrus(BA37) and right inferior temporal gyrus(BA20), and implicitrecognition of sad faces activated left middle frontal gyrus(BA10), rightmiddle frontal gyrus(BA6), right precuneus(BA31), right inferior parietallobule(BA40), left superior parietal lobule(BA7), right middle temporalgyrus(BA21), left middle temporal gyrus(BA22), left cingulated gyrus(BA31),right parahippocampal gyrus(BA28), left putamen and left thalamus.Conclusion:(1) The brain regions activated by recognition of neutral faces arecorrelated with experimental tasks. In the implicit condition, processing ofneutral faces need more extensive brain regions, and in the explicit condition,processing of neutral faces mostly activated some brain regions associatedwith emotion.(2) Explicit recognition of dynamic happy faces can occupy moreattention sources, activated more increased brain regions and more deep brainregions such as sub-lobe, however, implicit recognition of dynamic happyfaces showed increased activation in the brain regions which are correlated with facial motion character processing.(3) Implicit processing of dynamic sad facial expressions is mediated bya distributed cortical network including frontal-parietal cortex and subcortex(e.g. limbic lobe, basal ganglia and thalamus.), however, explicit recognitionof dynamic sad faces is not obviously different from recognition of dynamicneutral faces, which indicates that dynamic sad faces are more easily noticedand so activated more extensive brain regions. Experiment 3: Neural substrates for explicit and implicitrecognition of dynamic facial expressions in female major depressedpatients: a functional magnetic resonance studyObjective: To explore neural correlates for the explicit and implicitrecognition of dynamic facial expression videos in female major depressedpatients using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging.Methods: Fifteen Chinese nationality right-handed patients with majordepression and fifteen age and educational levels matched healthyright-handed adult female volunteers underwent blood oxygen level dependent(BOLD) fMRI while recognizing the emotional type and gender of happy, sad,neutral emotional faces and fixation cross videos.Results:(1) In comparison with healthy comparison participants, majordepression showed increased activation in left middle temporal gyrus(BA19),right inferior parietal lobule(BA40), left postcentral gyrus(BA7, BA5), rightpostcentral gyrus(BA7, BA5) and right precuneus(BA7), and decreasedactivation in bilateral superior parietal lobule(BA7) when explicit recognitionof happy faces. In the other, when implicit recognition of happy faces, incontrast with healthy comparison participants, major depression showedincreased activation in right inferior parietal lobule(BA40), and decreasedactivation in right cuneus(BA18), right postcentral gyrus(BA40), left superiorparietal lobule(BA7) and right insula(BA13). (2) In comparison with healthy comparison participants, majordepression showed increased activation in right middle occipital gyrus(BA18),left postcentral gyrus(BA5), left precuneus(BA7) and right hippocampus anddecreased activation in middle frontal gyrus when explicit recognition of sadfaces. In the other, when implicit recognition of sad faces, in contrast withhealthy comparison participants, major depression showed increasedactivation in left fusiform gyrus(BA19), right postcentral gyrus(BA2), rightprecuneus(BA7), left superior temporal gyrus(BA13), left supramarginalgyrus(BA40), left parahippocampal gyrus(BA36, 28), right parahippocampalgyrus (BA30), left posterior cingulated(BA29), right lentiform nucleus, rightthalamus and decreased activation in right postcentral gyrus (BA40), leftmiddle temporal gyrus (BA22) and bilateral superior temporal gyrus (BA22).Conclusion:(1) Whenever in the explicit processing or in the implicit processing,patients with major depression are not different from healthy comparisonparticipants in processing of positive emotion, but different in the perceptionof facial motions of happy expressions. Patients with major depression showattenuated ability to percept facial motion in the explicit processing, butincreased ability in the implicit processing.(2) Whenever in the explicit processing or in the implicit processing,recognition of sad faces in patients with major depression elicits increasedactivation in emotion production-related brain regions and decreased activation in emotion regulation-related brain regions, which is more obviousin the implicit condition than in the explicit condition.