title: Decoding facial expressions based on face-selective and motion-sensitive areas.
abstract: Humans can easily recognize others' facial expressions. Among the brain substrates that enable this ability, considerable attention has been paid to face-selective areas; in contrast, whether motion-sensitive areas, which clearly exhibit sensitivity to facial movements, are involved in facial expression recognition remained unclear. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study used multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to explore facial expression decoding in both face-selective and motion-sensitive areas. In a block design experiment, participants viewed facial expressions of six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise) in images, videos, and eyes-obscured videos. Due to the use of multiple stimulus types, the impacts of facial motion and eye-related information on facial expression decoding were also examined. It was found that motion-sensitive areas showed significant responses to emotional expressions and that dynamic expressions could be successfully decoded in both face-selective and motion-sensitive areas. Compared with static stimuli, dynamic expressions elicited consistently higher neural responses and decoding performance in all regions. A significant decrease in both activation and decoding accuracy due to the absence of eye-related information was also observed. Overall, the findings showed that emotional expressions are represented in motion-sensitive areas in addition to conventional face-selective areas, suggesting that motion-sensitive regions may also effectively contribute to facial expression recognition. The results also suggested that facial motion and eye-related information played important roles by carrying considerable expression information that could facilitate facial expression recognition. Hum Brain Mapp 38:3113-3125, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Cognitive Computing and Application, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300350, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Cognitive Computing and Application, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300350, People's Republic of China.|State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Technology and Systems, National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Baolin
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0657-9207
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Cognitive Computing and Application, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300350, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Junhai
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Cognitive Computing and Application, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300350, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Gaoyan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Medical Imaging Research Institute, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, Shandong, 264003, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xianglin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Yantai Affiliated Hospital of Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, Shandong, 264003, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Peiyuan
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Medical Imaging Research Institute, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, Shandong, 264003, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen
keywords: MVPA; eye-related information; fMRI; face-selective areas; facial expressions; facial motion; motion-sensitive areas