title: The role of superior temporal sulcus in the control of irrelevant emotional face processing: A transcranial direct current stimulation study.
abstract: Emotional faces are often salient cues of threats or other important contexts, and may therefore have a large effect on cognitive processes of the visual environment. Indeed, many behavioral studies have demonstrated that emotional information can modulate visual attention and eye movements. The aim of the present study was to investigate (1) how irrelevant emotional face distractors affect saccadic behaviors and (2) whether such emotional effects reflect a specific neural mechanism or merely biased selective attention. We combined a visual search paradigm that incorporated manipulation of different types of distractor (fearful faces or scrambled faces) and delivered anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the superior temporal sulcus and the frontal eye field to investigate the functional roles of these areas in processing facial expressions and eye movements. Our behavioral data suggest that irrelevant emotional distractors can modulate saccadic behaviors. The tDCS results showed that while rFEF played a more general role in controlling saccadic behavior, rSTS is mainly involved in facial expression processing. Furthermore, rSTS played a critical role in processing facial expressions even when such expressions were not relevant to the task goal, implying that facial expressions and processing may be automatic irrespective of the task goal.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, Jhongli 320, Taiwan; Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei 112, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Lin-Yuan
authors.initials: LY
authors.lastname: Tseng
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, Jhongli 320, Taiwan; Taipei Medical University-Shuang Ho Hospital, Brain and Consciousness Research Center, New Taipei City, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tseng
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, Jhongli 320, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Wei-Kuang
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, Jhongli 320, Taiwan; Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei 112, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Daisy L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Hung
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, Jhongli 320, Taiwan; Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei 112, Taiwan; Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ovid J L
authors.initials: OJ
authors.lastname: Tzeng
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, Jhongli 320, Taiwan; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Neil G
authors.initials: NG
authors.lastname: Muggleton
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, Jhongli 320, Taiwan. Electronic address: chijuan@cc.ncu.edu.tw.
authors.forename: Chi-Hung
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Juan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D065908:Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotion; Facial expressions; Frontal eye field; Saccade curvatures; Saccade latency; Superior temporal sulcus; tDCS