Commentary: Electrophysiological Evidence Reveals Differences between the Recognition of Microexpressions and Macroexpressions

Shen et al. (2016) examined whether perceptions of short (40 and 120 ms) and long (200 and 300ms) expressions were associated with distinctive electrophysiological processes Using an “affective priming paradigm,” the researchers presented pairs of fearful, happy, and neutral expressions with positive and negative emotion words while participants’ electroencephalograms (EEG) and Event Related Potentials (ERP) were assessed. Expressions presented at 40 and 120ms were similar to each other but different from expressions presented at 200 and 300ms in their ERP and Event Related Spectral Perturbation (ERSP) characteristics. Analyses also suggested that the brain regions responsible for these differences included the inferior temporal gyrus and regions of the frontal lobe and that the left hemisphere was more involved than the right in processing expressions at 200 and 300 ms. The methods and findings from this study have novel implications concerning facial expressions of emotion (hereafter FEE). Below we discuss four such implications with the goal of inspiring further research and insights into this important topic.

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