The prefrontal cortex conscious and unconscious response to social/emotional facial expressions involve sex, hemispheric laterality, and selective activation of the central cardiac modulation.

The prefrontal cortex conscious and unconscious response to social/emotional facial expressions involve sex, hemispheric laterality, and selective activation of the central cardiac modulation. Behav Brain Res. 2020 Jun 13;:112773 Authors: Fogazzi DV, Neary JP, Sonza A, Reppold CT, Kaiser V, Scassola CM, Casali KR, Rasia-Filho AA Abstract The human prefrontal cortex (PFC) processes complex sensory information for the elaboration of social behaviors. The non-invasive neuroimaging technique near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) identifies hemodynamic changes and concentration of oxygenated (HbO2) and deoxygenated (HHb) hemoglobin in the cerebral cortex. We studied the responses detected by NIRS in the right and left PFC activation of 28 participants (n = 14 adult young females and males) while processing social/emotional facial expressions, i.e., in conscious perception of different expressions (neutral, happy, sad, angry, disgust, and fearful) and in unconscious/masked perception of negative expressions (fearful and disgust overlapped by neutral). The power spectral analysis from concomitant ECG signals revealed the sympathetic and parasympathetic modulation of cardiac responses. We found higher HbO2 values in the right PFC of females than in males during, and in the left PFC after, following the conscious perception of the happy face. In males, the left PFC increased and the right PFC decreased HbO2 while viewing the happy expression....
Source: Behavioural Brain Research - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research