Previous research on interpersonal deficits among dysphoric individuals has been equivocal, with some studies finding that dysphoric persons show an increase in negative behavior and other studies finding no group differences. Most studies in this area have employed self-report instruments and behavioral coding systems to examine interpersonal displays. Using a different approach, we examined f...

The expression of emotion is determined by emotion and the presence and absence of others, i.e. social context. The present study examined social context differences in facial muscle activity and self-reported emotion of 11 major depressed and 11 non-depressed patients. Subjects were asked to imagine happy and sad situations with and without visualizing other people. Facial muscle activity over...

There has been a growing recognition of the importance of reward processing in PTSD, yet little is known of the underlying neural networks. This study tested the predictions that (1) individuals with PTSD would display reduced responses to happy facial expressions in ventral striatal reward networks, and (2) that this reduction would be associated with emotional numbing symptoms. 23 treatment-s...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the human brain was used to study whether the amygdala is activated in response to emotional stimuli, even in the absence of explicit knowledge that such stimuli were presented. Pictures of human faces bearing fearful or happy expressions were presented to 10 normal, healthy subjects by using a backward masking procedure that resulted in 8 of 10 s...

This study used a morphed categorical perception facial expression task to evaluate whether patients with depression demonstrated deficits in distinguishing boundaries between emotions. Forty-one patients with depression and 41 healthy controls took part in this study. They were administered a standardized set of morphed photographs of facial expressions with varying emotional intensities betwe...

There is some evidence that faces with a happy expression are recognized better than faces with other expressions. However, little is known about whether this happy-face advantage also applies to perceptual face matching, and whether similar differences exist among other expressions. Using a sequential matching paradigm, we systematically compared the effects of seven basic facial expressions o...

Faces with expressions (happy, surprise, anger, fear) were presented at study. Memory for facial expressions was tested by presenting the same faces with neutral expressions and asking participants to determine the expression that had been displayed at study. In three experiments, happy expressions were remembered better than other expressions. The advantage of a happy face was observed even wh...

Numerous studies have shown that humans automatically react with congruent facial reactions, i.e., facial mimicry, when seeing a vis-á-vis' facial expressions. The current experiment is the first investigating the neuronal structures responsible for differences in the occurrence of such facial mimicry reactions by simultaneously measuring BOLD and facial EMG in an MRI scanner. Therefore, 20 fem...

BACKGROUND Predominant dissociation in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by restricted affective responses to positive stimuli. To date, no studies have examined neural responses to a range of emotional expressions in PTSD with high dissociative symptoms. OBJECTIVE This study tested the hypothesis that PTSD patients with high dissociative symptoms will display increased ev...

AIM The aim of this study is to examine emotional processing of infant displays in people with Eating Disorders (EDs). BACKGROUND Social and emotional factors are implicated as causal and maintaining factors in EDs. Difficulties in emotional regulation have been mainly studied in relation to adult interactions, with less interest given to interactions with infants. METHOD A sample of 138 wo...