Pupil Dilation Reflects the Time Course of Emotion Recognition in Human Vocalizations

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2018 Mar 22

PMID 29559673

Citations 25

Authors

Manuel Oliva

Andrey Anikin

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The processing of emotional signals usually causes an increase in pupil size, and this effect has been largely attributed to autonomic arousal prompted by the stimuli. Additionally, changes in pupil size were associated with decision making during non-emotional perceptual tasks. Therefore, in this study we investigated the relationship between pupil size fluctuations and the process of emotion recognition. Participants heard human nonverbal vocalizations (e.g., laughing, crying) and indicated the emotional state of the speakers as soon as they had identified it. The results showed that during emotion recognition, the time course of pupil response was driven by the decision-making process. In particular, peak pupil dilation betrayed the time of emotional selection. In addition, pupil response revealed properties of the decisions, such as the perceived emotional valence and the confidence in the assessment. Because pupil dilation (under isoluminance conditions) is almost exclusively promoted by norepinephrine (NE) release from the locus coeruleus (LC), the results suggest an important role of the LC-NE system during emotion processing.

Citing Articles

Transformer-based fusion model for mild depression recognition with EEG and pupil area signals.

Zhu J, Li Y, Yang C, Cai H, Li X, Hu B Med Biol Eng Comput. 2025; .

PMID: 39909988 DOI: 10.1007/s11517-024-03269-8.

Emotional contagion to vocal smile revealed by combined pupil reactivity and motor resonance.

Merchie A, Ranty Z, Aguillon-Hernandez N, Aucouturier J, Wardak C, Gomot M Sci Rep. 2024; 14(1):25043.

PMID: 39443497 PMC: 11499673. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-74848-w.

Pupil dilation responds to the intrinsic social characteristics of affective touch.

Bonino G, Mazza A, Capiotto F, Berti A, Pia L, Dal Monte O Sci Rep. 2024; 14(1):24297.

PMID: 39414894 PMC: 11484950. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-74566-3.

Multi-level processing of emotions in life motion signals revealed through pupil responses.

Yuan T, Wang L, Jiang Y Elife. 2024; 12.

PMID: 39401063 PMC: 11473101. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.89873.

Salient omissions-pupil dilation in response to unexpected omissions of sound and touch.

Dercksen T, Widmann A, Wetzel N Front Psychiatry. 2023; 14:1143931.

PMID: 37032955 PMC: 10077953. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1143931.

References

Bradley M, Miccoli L, Escrig M, Lang P . The pupil as a measure of emotional arousal and autonomic activation. Psychophysiology. 2008; 45(4):602-7. PMC: 3612940. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00654.x. View

Kinner V, Kuchinke L, Dierolf A, Merz C, Otto T, Wolf O . What our eyes tell us about feelings: Tracking pupillary responses during emotion regulation processes. Psychophysiology. 2017; 54(4):508-518. DOI: 10.1111/psyp.12816. View

McElreath R, Smaldino P . Replication, Communication, and the Population Dynamics of Scientific Discovery. PLoS One. 2015; 10(8):e0136088. PMC: 4550284. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0136088. View

Peirce J . PsychoPy--Psychophysics software in Python. J Neurosci Methods. 2007; 162(1-2):8-13. PMC: 2018741. DOI: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2006.11.017. View

LeDoux J . Rethinking the emotional brain. Neuron. 2012; 73(4):653-76. PMC: 3625946. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.02.004. View

Oswal A, Ogden M, Carpenter R . The time course of stimulus expectation in a saccadic decision task. J Neurophysiol. 2007; 97(4):2722-30. DOI: 10.1152/jn.01238.2006. View

de Gee J, Knapen T, Donner T . Decision-related pupil dilation reflects upcoming choice and individual bias. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014; 111(5):E618-25. PMC: 3918830. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1317557111. View

Eldar E, Cohen J, Niv Y . The effects of neural gain on attention and learning. Nat Neurosci. 2013; 16(8):1146-53. PMC: 3725201. DOI: 10.1038/nn.3428. View

Sara S, Bouret S . Orienting and reorienting: the locus coeruleus mediates cognition through arousal. Neuron. 2012; 76(1):130-41. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.09.011. View

10.

McIntyre C, McGaugh J, Williams C . Interacting brain systems modulate memory consolidation. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011; 36(7):1750-62. PMC: 3315607. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.11.001. View

11.

Gold J, Shadlen M . The neural basis of decision making. Annu Rev Neurosci. 2007; 30:535-74. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.neuro.29.051605.113038. View

12.

Gilzenrat M, Nieuwenhuis S, Jepma M, Cohen J . Pupil diameter tracks changes in control state predicted by the adaptive gain theory of locus coeruleus function. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2010; 10(2):252-69. PMC: 3403821. DOI: 10.3758/CABN.10.2.252. View

13.

Pell M, Kotz S . On the time course of vocal emotion recognition. PLoS One. 2011; 6(11):e27256. PMC: 3210149. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0027256. View

14.

Pessoa L, Adolphs R . Emotion processing and the amygdala: from a 'low road' to 'many roads' of evaluating biological significance. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2010; 11(11):773-83. PMC: 3025529. DOI: 10.1038/nrn2920. View

15.

Kotz S, Kalberlah C, Bahlmann J, Friederici A, Haynes J . Predicting vocal emotion expressions from the human brain. Hum Brain Mapp. 2012; 34(8):1971-81. PMC: 6870124. DOI: 10.1002/hbm.22041. View

16.

Lovett-Barron M, Andalman A, Allen W, Vesuna S, Kauvar I, Burns V . Ancestral Circuits for the Coordinated Modulation of Brain State. Cell. 2017; 171(6):1411-1423.e17. PMC: 5725395. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.10.021. View

17.

Anikin A, Persson T . Nonlinguistic vocalizations from online amateur videos for emotion research: A validated corpus. Behav Res Methods. 2016; 49(2):758-771. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-016-0736-y. View

18.

Rieger G, Savin-Williams R . The eyes have it: sex and sexual orientation differences in pupil dilation patterns. PLoS One. 2012; 7(8):e40256. PMC: 3411709. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040256. View

19.

Murphy P, Boonstra E, Nieuwenhuis S . Global gain modulation generates time-dependent urgency during perceptual choice in humans. Nat Commun. 2016; 7:13526. PMC: 5123079. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13526. View

20.

Fruhholz S, Grandjean D . Multiple subregions in superior temporal cortex are differentially sensitive to vocal expressions: a quantitative meta-analysis. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2012; 37(1):24-35. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.11.002. View