Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268

Despite the concern that has been expressed about potential method biases, and the pervasiveness of research settings with the potential to produce them, there is disagreement about whether they really are a problem for researchers in the behavioral sciences. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to explore the current state of knowledge about method biases. First, we explore the meaning of the terms “method” and “method bias” and then we examine whether method biases influence all measures equally. Next, we review the evidence of the effects that method biases have on individual measures and on the covariation between different constructs. Following this, we evaluate the procedural and statistical remedies that have been used to control method biases and provide recommendations for minimizing method bias.

Sources of Method Bias in Social Science Research and Recommendations on How to Control It

The field of neuroscience has, after a long period of looking the other way, again embraced emotion as an important research area. Much of the progress has come from studies of fear, and especially fear conditioning. This work has pin- pointed the amygdala as an important component of the system involved in the acqui- sition, storage, and expression of fear memory and has elucidated in detail how stimuli enter, travel through, and exit the amygdala. Some progress has also been made in understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie fear conditioning, and recent studies have also shown that the findings from experimental animals apply to the human brain. It is important to remember why this work on emotion succeeded where past efforts failed. It focused on a psychologically well-defined aspect of emo- tion, avoided vague and poorly defined concepts such as "affect," "hedonic tone," or "emotional feelings," and used a simple and straightforward experimental approach. With so much research being done in this area today, it is important that the mistakes of the past not be made again. It is also time to expand from this foundation into broader aspects of mind and behavior

http://gruberpeplab.com/3131/LeDoux_2000_Emotioncircuitbrain.pdf

Emotion Circuits in the Brain

Emotions are viewed as having evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life-tasks. Each emotion has unique features: signal, physiology, and antecedent events. Each emotion ...

http://files.espertaemozionietaevolutiva.webnode.it/200000014-c9216ca1b9/Ekman%20(1992)%20an%20argument%20for%20basic%20emotion.pdf

An argument for basic emotions

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found an area in the fusiform gyrus in 12 of the 15 subjects tested that was significantly more active when the subjects viewed faces than when they viewed assorted common objects. This face activation was used to define a specific region of interest individually for each subject, within which several new tests of face specificity were run. In each of five subjects tested, the predefined candidate “face area” also responded significantly more strongly to passive viewing of (1) intact than scrambled two-tone faces, (2) full front-view face photos than front-view photos of houses, and (in a different set of five subjects) (3) three-quarter-view face photos (with hair concealed) than photos of human hands; it also responded more strongly during (4) a consecutive matching task performed on three-quarter-view faces versus hands. Our technique of running multiple tests applied to the same region defined functionally within individual subjects provides a solution to two common problems in functional imaging: (1) the requirement to correct for multiple statistical comparisons and (2) the inevitable ambiguity in the interpretation of any study in which only two or three conditions are compared. Our data allow us to reject alternative accounts of the function of the fusiform face area (area “FF”) that appeal to visual attention, subordinate-level classification, or general processing of any animate or human forms, demonstrating that this region is selectively involved in the perception of faces.

/pdf/the-fusiform-face-area-a-module-in-human-extrastriate-cortex-2xuspzx096.pdf

The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception

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 subjects reporting that they had not seen these facial expressions. The backward masking procedure consisted of 33 msec presentations of fearful or happy facial expressions, their offset coincident with the onset of 167 msec presentations of neutral facial expressions. Although subjects reported seeing only neutral faces, blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI signal in the amygdala was significantly higher during viewing of masked fearful faces than during the viewing of masked happy faces. This difference was composed of significant signal increases in the amygdala to masked fearful faces as well as significant signal decreases to masked happy faces, consistent with the notion that the level of amygdala activation is affected differentially by the emotional valence of external stimuli. In addition, these facial expressions activated the sublenticular substantia innominata (SI), where signal increases were observed to both fearful and happy faces—suggesting a spatial dissociation of territories that respond to emotional valence versus salience or arousal value. This study, using fMRI in conjunction with masked stimulus presentations, represents an initial step toward determining the role of the amygdala in nonconscious processing.

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/18/1/411.full.pdf

Masked Presentations of Emotional Facial Expressions Modulate Amygdala Activity without Explicit Knowledge

https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(00)80219-6.pdf

Response and Habituation of the Human Amygdala during Visual Processing of Facial Expression

https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(01)00491-3.pdf

Beautiful Faces Have Variable Reward Value: fMRI and Behavioral Evidence

In three studies, subjects observed slide and tape portrayals of interacting small groups that were of mixed sex or mixed race. Hypotheses tested were (a) that social perceivers encode person information by race and sex; (b) that this fact leads to minimizing within-group differences and exaggerating between-group differences; (c) that perceivers stereotype accordingly; (d) that within-group attributes, both stereotyped and nonstereotyped, are exaggerated in inverse proportion to the size of the minority subgroup; (e) that better discriminations are made within smaller subgroups; (f) that imputations of attributes to groups as a whole are also sensitive to the makeup of the group; and (g) that all these behaviors are attenuated when the perceiver is a member of the subgroup evaluated. All but the last hypothesis received at least partial support. Results are discussed in terms of categorizatio n processes and suggest that normal cognitive processes explain the process of stereotyping quite well.

Nancy L. Etcoff

Papers

Masked Presentations of Emotional Facial Expressions Modulate Amygdala Activity without Explicit Knowledge

Response and Habituation of the Human Amygdala during Visual Processing of Facial Expression

Beautiful Faces Have Variable Reward Value: fMRI and Behavioral Evidence

Categorical and contextual bases of person memory and stereotyping.

Categorical perception of facial expressions.