Event-related brain potential correlates of emotional face processing

Results from recent event-related brain potential (ERP) studies investigating brain processes involved in the detection and analysis of emotional facial expression are reviewed. In all experiments, emotional faces were found to trigger an increased ERP positivity relative to neutral faces. The onset of this emotional expression effect was remarkably early, ranging from 120 to 180ms post-stimulus in different experiments where faces were either presented at fixation or laterally, and with or without non-face distractor stimuli. While broadly distributed positive deflections beyond 250ms post-stimulus have been found in previous studies for non-face stimuli, the early frontocentrally distributed phase of this…