EEG mu component responses to viewing emotional faces

Simulation theories for the perceptual processing of emotional faces assert that observers recruit the neural circuitry involved in creating their own emotional facial expressions in order to recognize the emotions and infer the feelings of others. The EEG mu rhythm is a sensorimotor oscillation hypothesized to index simulation of some actions during perceptual processing of these actions. The purpose of this research was to extend the study of mu rhythm simulation responses during perceptual tasks to the domain of emotional face perception. Subjects viewed happy and disgusted face photos with empathy and non-empathy task instructions while EEG responses were measured. EEG components were isolated and analyzed using a blind source separation (BSS) method. Mu components were found to respond to the perception of happy and disgusted faces during both empathy and non-empathy tasks with an event-related desynchronization (ERD), activation that is consistent with face simulation. Significant differences were found between responses to happy and to disgusted faces across the right hemisphere mu components beginning about 500 ms after stimulus presentation. These findings support a simulation account of perceptual face processing based on a sensorimotor mirroring mechanism, and are the first report of distinct EEG mu responses to observation of positively and negatively valenced emotional faces.

► Blind source separation is used to find mu EEG component face perception responses.
► We report mu ERD responses, evidence of sensorimotor simulation of emotional faces.
► Mu ERD activation occurs to happy and disgust faces with and without an empathy task.
► Right hemisphere mu ERD responses to happy and disgusted faces differ significantly.