How the brain resolves ambiguity in emotion perception

Olshan, Sarah M.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124462 Copy

Description

Title

How the brain resolves ambiguity in emotion perception

Author(s)

Olshan, Sarah M.

Issue Date

2024-05-02

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Sadaghiani, Sepideh

Committee Member(s)

Beck, Diane

Department of Study

Psychology

Discipline

Psychology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• emotion perception
• ambiguity
• fMRI

Abstract

Interpreting emotional information from the faces of others guides social behavior. This information is often ambiguous, requiring reliance on internal brain states. Thus, the intrinsic brain processes involved in resolving emotional ambiguity have important implications for everyday interactions, especially in the context of conditions like depression and autism. Prior work has examined neural correlates of face valence judgments at threshold. However, it remains unknown how task-evoked responses differ across different perceptual outcomes on identical trials of emotionally ambiguous face stimuli. The present study investigated what brain systems are important for resolving emotional ambiguity of a repeatedly presented emotionally ambiguous stimulus. Thirty participants (Female=21, Mage=21.71) completed an emotional face judgment task on repeated exposure to an emotionally ambiguous face that could be judged as sad or neutral. The image was individually chosen for each subject prior to the experiment using a threshold detection procedure on eleven different levels of sad-to-neutral morphing. General linear models were constructed to assess how task-evoked responses differed between the two percepts. Group-level results did not reveal any significant differences between the two conditions. The absence of task-evoked differences at the group-level could reflect different decision-making strategies that e.g., give weight to different types of stimuli features across individuals. Alternatively, repeating these analyses in a larger sample will clarify whether a larger effect size is needed given subtle differences between perceptual outcomes. Future work will investigate how pre-stimulus brain states and transdiagnostic factors may be related to the tendency to perceive an identical face stimulus as sad compared to neutral.

Graduation Semester

2024-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 Sarah Olshan

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