Facial emotional congruence in healthy adults and patients suffering from a psychiatric or neurological disorder.

Abstract

The production of facial emotions is an important conveyor of social communication. The present review of the literature concerns the congruence of facial emotions, that is the facial muscular activation that takes place in response to the emotional facial expression perceived in others. Although scientific interest in facial emotions has increased exponentially in the last few years, the production of facial emotions is still underexplored as compared to emotional perception. Several studies, mainly conducted with electromyography, have shown that facial emotional congruence exists in a robust way, largely for anger and happiness. While facial emotional congruence was long considered as innate and automatic, recent work has demonstrated that several sociocultural factors may influence or reduce this ability, challenging its automaticity. From a neuroanatomical point of view, studies have clearly highlighted the implication of mirror neurons but our knowledge is still limited because of the few methodologies assessing this system and the lack of homogeneity between the protocols used. Many explanatory, and probably not mutually exclusive, theories of emotional facial congruence have been put forward. In experimental neuropsychology, emotional facial congruence has seldom been investigated but the few available results suggest an impairment in psychiatric and neurological patients. In view of the important role of emotional facial productions in human relations and social interactions, new methods for easy clinical assessment need to be designed for the diagnosis and the cognitive care of these abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).