Dataset Information

The menstrual cycle affects recognition of emotional expressions: an event-related potential study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Several studies have investigated the relationship between behavioral changes and the menstrual cycle in female subjects at a reproductive age. The present study investigated the relationship between the menstrual cycle and emotional face recognition by measuring the N170 component of ERPs.

Methods

We measured N170 of twelve women in both follicular phase and late luteal phase who were presented with human facial expressions as stimuli (happy and angry).

Results

In the follicular phase, participants showed a significantly larger response to happy male facial expressions. In the late luteal phase, participants had longer reaction times to all emotional stimuli, and a significantly reduced response to happy faces, especially happy male facial expressions (P<0.001).

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that the menstrual cycle modulates early visual cognitive processing, and highlight the importance of considering the menstrual cycle phase in studies that investigate emotion and cognition.

SUBMITTER: Yamazaki M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5558101 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

The menstrual cycle affects recognition of emotional expressions: an event-related potential study.

Yamazaki Madoka M Tamura Kyoko K

F1000Research 20170608

<h4>Background</h4>Several studies have investigated the relationship between behavioral changes and the menstrual cycle in female subjects at a reproductive age. The present study investigated the relationship between the menstrual cycle and emotional face recognition by measuring the N170 component of ERPs.<h4>Methods</h4>We measured N170 of twelve women in both follicular phase and late luteal phase who were presented with human facial expressions as stimuli (happy and angry).<h4>Results</h4> ...[more]

PMID: 28868136

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Project description:This study aims at examining the precise temporal dynamics of the emotional facial decoding as it unfolds in the brain, according to the emotions displayed. To characterize this processing as it occurs in ecological settings, we focused on unconstrained visual explorations of natural emotional faces (i.e., free eye movements). The General Linear Model (GLM; Smith and Kutas, 2015a,b; Kristensen et al., 2017a) enables such a depiction. It allows deconvolving adjacent overlapping responses of the eye fixation-related potentials (EFRPs) elicited by the subsequent fixations and the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited at the stimuli onset. Nineteen participants were displayed with spontaneous static facial expressions of emotions (Neutral, Disgust, Surprise, and Happiness) from the DynEmo database (Tcherkassof et al., 2013). Behavioral results on participants' eye movements show that the usual diagnostic features in emotional decoding (eyes for negative facial displays and mouth for positive ones) are consistent with the literature. The impact of emotional category on both the ERPs and the EFRPs elicited by the free exploration of the emotional faces is observed upon the temporal dynamics of the emotional facial expression processing. Regarding the ERP at stimulus onset, there is a significant emotion-dependent modulation of the P2-P3 complex and LPP components' amplitude at the left frontal site for the ERPs computed by averaging. Yet, the GLM reveals the impact of subsequent fixations on the ERPs time-locked on stimulus onset. Results are also in line with the valence hypothesis. The observed differences between the two estimation methods (Average vs. GLM) suggest the predominance of the right hemisphere at the stimulus onset and the implication of the left hemisphere in the processing of the information encoded by subsequent fixations. Concerning the first EFRP, the Lambda response and the P2 component are modulated by the emotion of surprise compared to the neutral emotion, suggesting an impact of high-level factors, in parieto-occipital sites. Moreover, no difference is observed on the second and subsequent EFRP. Taken together, the results stress the significant gain obtained in analyzing the EFRPs using the GLM method and pave the way toward efficient ecological emotional dynamic stimuli analyses.

Dataset Information

The menstrual cycle affects recognition of emotional expressions: an event-related potential study.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

The menstrual cycle affects recognition of emotional expressions: an event-related potential study.

Similar Datasets

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