Facial mimicry and the mirror neuron system: simultaneous acquisition of facial electromyography and functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Katja U. Likowski,Andreas Mühlberger,Antje B. M. Gerdes,Antje B. M. Gerdes,Matthias J. Wieser,Paul Pauli,Peter Weyers +6 more
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TLDR
Regression analyses show that these congruent facial reactions correlate significantly with activations in the IFG, SMA, and cerebellum, and in relation to core and extended models of the mirror neuron system (MNS).Abstract:
Numerous studies have shown that humans automatically react with congruent facial reactions, i.e. facial mimicry, when seeing a vis-a-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 female students viewed emotional facial expressions (happy, sad, and angry) of male and female avatar characters. During Differentiation presentation, the BOLD signal as well as M. zygomaticus major and M. corrugator supercilii activity were recorded simultaneously. Results show prototypical patterns of facial mimicry after correction for MR-related artifacts: enhanced M. zygomaticus major activity in response to happy and enhanced M. corrugator supercilii activity in response to sad and angry expressions. Regression analyses show that these congruent facial reactions correlate significantly with activations in the IFG, SMA and cerebellum. Stronger zygomaticus reactions to happy faces were further associated to increased activities in the caudate, MTG and PCC. Corrugator reactions to angry expressions were further correlated with the hippocampus, insula and STS. Results are discussed in relation to core and extended models of the mirror neuron system.read more
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Connecting minds and sharing emotions through mimicry: A neurocognitive model of emotional contagion.
TL;DR: It is argued that automatic mimicry is a precursor to healthy social development and a synthesized model, built upon integrative knowledge from various fields, provides a promising avenue for future research investigating the role of mimicry in human mental health and social development.
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Facial mimicry in its social setting
TL;DR: It is concluded that facial mimicry is modulated by many factors: attention deployment and sensitivity, detection of valence, emotional feelings, and social motivations, which are the more proximal causes of changes in facial mimicRY due to changes in its social setting.
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Is it the real deal? Perception of virtual characters versus humans: an affective cognitive neuroscience perspective
TL;DR: It is shown that expressions of emotions in human-like avatars can be perceived similarly to human emotions, with corresponding behavioral, physiological and neuronal activations, with exception of physical dissimilarities.
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The perception and mimicry of facial movements predict judgments of smile authenticity.
TL;DR: Results suggest that, in contrast to most earlier work using static pictures as stimuli, participants relied less on the Duchenne marker (the presence of crow’s feet wrinkles around the eyes) in their judgments of authenticity.
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The neuroethology of spontaneous mimicry and emotional contagion in human and non-human animals.
TL;DR: A bottom-up, multidisciplinary approach to the study of spontaneous mimicry is proposed that accounts for the evolutionary continuity linking non-human and human animals.
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