“Measuring Emotion: Behavior, Feeling, and Physiology”

By: Margaret M Bradley & Peter J. Lang

Group 3-Youngjin Kang, Alyssa Nolde, Antoinette Sellers, Zhiheng Zhou

Why do the authors focus on specific muscles? Why do they matter?

• Responses of facial muscles help to characterize how emotions are expresses physiologically.

• Studying specific muscles like the zygomatic muscle provides information to researchers about how physiological responses accompany perceptions of arousal and affect of stimuli

Figure 11.6• Patterns of physiological

response• Shows that:

– Facial corrugator EMG activity (top) left) and heart rate (top right) vary as function of picture valence• Ex. Strong contraction of the

corrugator muscle when a picture is rated as unpleasant

– Skin conductance activity (bottom left) and cortical evoked potentials (bottom right) vary with picture arousal• Ex. As arousal increased, skin

conductance increased

Figure 11.7• Figure 11.7 shows the correlation

between individula’s affective judgments of pleasure and arousal with with their physiological and behavioral response

• Corrugator EMG, zygomatic, and heart rate vary with differences in rates pleasure– Ex. Zygomatic activity increases as

the pleasantness of the stimuli increases

• Skin conductance, cortical evoked potentials, and viewing time vary with arousal ratings– Cortical activity increases as

arousal increases

What does heart rate measure?• Triphasic pattern of heart rate response– Initial deceleration (unpleasant)– Followed acceleration (unpleasant)– Secondary deceleration

Electrocardiogram Heart rate monitor

What does skin conductance measure?

• Skin conductance, also known as galvanic skin response (GSR), reflects activation of the autonomic nervous system by measuring the electrodermal activity

• Indexation of arousal

Event related potentials and slow wave activity?

Brain Activities Processing Emotional Pictures

• Overlapping areas General visual processing (Calcarine fissure + Brodmann ‘s area 18) (Lang, et al., 1998).

• Emotional Stimuli 1. More overall activation with emotional pictures. 2. Right occipital gyrus activation with only emotional pictures (Lang, et al., 1998).

• Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., Fitzsimmons, J. R., Cuthbert, B. N., Scott, J. D., Moulder, B., & Nangia, V. (1998). Emotional arousal and activation of the visual cortex: An fMRI analysis. Psychophysiology, 35(2), 199-210.

Coronal Plane of

Occipital Lobe

Discuss how these measures can yield meaningful patterns and examples of analyses leading to them.

Sex Differences of Brain activity with Emotional Pictures• Main EffectMore right posterior

activation with emotional pictures regardless of sex (Lang, et al., 1998).

• Interaction Effect1. More right posterior

activation of unpleasant stimuli for female participant's.

2. More right posterior activation of pleasant stimuli for male participants

(Lang., et al., 1998). Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., Fitzsimmons, J. R., Cuthbert, B.

N., Scott, J. D., Moulder, B., & Nangia, V. (1998). Emotional arousal and activation of the visual cortex: An fMRI analysis. Psychophysiology, 35(2), 199-210.