title: The neural processing of fearful faces without attention and consciousness: an event-related potential study.
abstract: To investigate whether the non-conscious processing of fearful faces exist in unattended condition, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in a facial expression detection task. Participants were asked to discriminate the facial expressions (fearful or neutral) at the attended location. Unattended faces were associated with a response that was either congruent or in conflict with the response to the attended face. ERP results showed that the trials with response conflict between attended and unattended faces enhanced the amplitude of the P3 component when the neutral face was presented at attended location and the fearful face was presented at the unattended location. Our findings imply that the non-conscious fearful faces can be processed in the unattended condition.
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Lili
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Shimin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.forename: Chunliang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.forename: Wenbo
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Xiangru
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Yue-jia
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Luo
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult