title: Drug effects on responses to emotional facial expressions: recent findings.
abstract: Many psychoactive drugs increase social behavior and enhance social interactions, which may, in turn, increase their attractiveness to users. Although the psychological mechanisms by which drugs affect social behavior are not fully understood, there is some evidence that drugs alter the perception of emotions in others. Drugs can affect the ability to detect, attend to, and respond to emotional facial expressions, which in turn may influence their use in social settings. Either increased reactivity to positive expressions or decreased response to negative expressions may facilitate social interaction. This article reviews evidence that psychoactive drugs alter the processing of emotional facial expressions using subjective, behavioral, and physiological measures. The findings lay the groundwork for better understanding how drugs alter social processing and social behavior more generally.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
authors.forename: Melissa A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: Anya K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Bershad
authors.forename: Harriet
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: de Wit
mesh_terms: D001519:Behavior / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs / Q000494:pharmacology; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000494:pharmacology*; D012919:Social Behavior
chemical_list: D013287:Illicit Drugs; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs