Facial responses of adult humans during the anticipation and consumption of touch and food rewards.

Facial responses of adult humans during the anticipation and consumption of touch and food rewards.
Cognition. 2019 Sep 06;194:104044
Authors: Korb S, Massaccesi C, Gartus A, Lundström JN, Rumiati R, Eisenegger C, Silani G
Abstract
Whether cognitive, motivational and hedonic aspects of reward anticipation and consumption can be reliably assessed with explicit and implicit measures, and if different motivational (decision utility) and hedonic (experienced utility) processes get recruited by distinct reward types, remain partly unsolved questions that are relevant for theories of social and non-social decision-making. We investigated these topics using a novel experimental paradigm, including carefully matched social and nonsocial rewards, and by focusing on facial responses. Facial expressions are indeed an often-cited implicit measure of rewards' hedonic impact. For example, food rewards elicit powerful facial responses - characterized by lip smacking, tongue protrusion, and relaxation of the middle face - in human newborns, juvenile monkeys, and adult rats. The same stimuli elicit more nuanced facial reactions in adult humans, which can be best captured with facial electromyography (fEMG). However, little is known about facial expressions preceding reward consumption, reflecting the motivation to obtain and possibly the expected pleasantness of a reward, and whether similar facial expressions are elicited by different types of rewa...

Source: Cognition - September 5, 2019 Category: Neurology Authors: Korb S, Massaccesi C, Gartus A, Lundström JN, Rumiati R, Eisenegger C, Silani G Tags: Cognition Source Type: research