TY - JOUR
T1 - Startle modulation by affective faces
AU - Anokhin, Andrey P.
AU - Golosheykin, Simon
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the grants DA00421 and DA018899 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse . The authors thank Dr. Sean Kristjansson and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.
PY - 2010/1
Y1 - 2010/1
N2 - Startle reflex modulation by affective pictures is a well-established effect in human emotion research. However, much less is known about startle modulation by affective faces, despite the growing evidence that facial expressions robustly activate emotion-related brain circuits. In this study, acoustic startle probes were administered to 37 young adult participants (20 women) during the viewing of slides from the Pictures of Facial Affect set including neutral, happy, angry, and fearful faces. The effect of expression valence (happy, neutral, and negative) on startle magnitude was highly significant (p < .001). Startle reflex was strongly potentiated by negative expressions (fearful and angry), however, no attenuation by happy faces was observed. A significant valence by gender interaction suggests stronger startle potentiation effects in females. These results demonstrate that affective facial expressions can produce significant modulation of the startle reflex.
AB - Startle reflex modulation by affective pictures is a well-established effect in human emotion research. However, much less is known about startle modulation by affective faces, despite the growing evidence that facial expressions robustly activate emotion-related brain circuits. In this study, acoustic startle probes were administered to 37 young adult participants (20 women) during the viewing of slides from the Pictures of Facial Affect set including neutral, happy, angry, and fearful faces. The effect of expression valence (happy, neutral, and negative) on startle magnitude was highly significant (p < .001). Startle reflex was strongly potentiated by negative expressions (fearful and angry), however, no attenuation by happy faces was observed. A significant valence by gender interaction suggests stronger startle potentiation effects in females. These results demonstrate that affective facial expressions can produce significant modulation of the startle reflex.
KW - Emotion
KW - Facial expression
KW - Startle reflex
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=71149095639&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2009.10.001
DO - 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2009.10.001
M3 - Article
C2 - 19833169
AN - SCOPUS:71149095639
VL - 83
SP - 37
EP - 40
JO - Biological Psychology
JF - Biological Psychology
SN - 0301-0511
IS - 1
ER -