Interaction between Facial Expression and Color in Modulating ERP P3.

Abstract

The relationships between facial expression and color affect human cognition functions such as perception and memory. However, whether these relationships influence selective attention and brain activity contributed to selective attention remains unclear. For example, reddish angry faces increase emotion intensity, but it is unclear whether brain activity and selective attention are similarly enhanced. To investigate these questions, we examined whether event-related potentials for faces vary depending on facial expression and color by recording electroencephalography (EEG) data. We conducted an oddball task using stimuli that combined facial expressions (angry, neutral) and facial colors (original, red, green). The participants counted the number of times a rarely appearing target face stimulus appeared among the standard face stimuli. The results indicated that the difference in P3 amplitudes for the target and standard faces depended on the combinations of facial expressions and facial colors; the P3 for red angry faces were greater than those for red neutral faces. Additionally, facial expression or facial color had no significant main effect or interaction effect on P1 amplitudes for the target, and facial expression had significant main effects only on the N170 amplitude. These findings suggest that the interaction between facial expression and color modulates the P3 associated with selective attention. Moreover, the response enhancement resulting from this interaction appears to occur at a cognitive processing stage that follows the processing stage associated with facial color or expression alone. Our results support the idea that red color increases the human response to anger from an EEG perspective.