Abstract:
Emotions are processed in the brain through a cortical route, responsible for detailed-conscious recognition and mainly based on image High Spatial Frequencies (HSF), and a subcortical route, responsible for coarse-unconscious processing and based on Low SF (LSF). However, little is known about possible changes in the functioning of the two routes in ageing. In the present go/no-go online task, 112 younger adults and 111 older adults were asked to press a button when a happy or angry face appeared (go) and to inhibit responses for neutral faces (no-go). Facial stimuli were presented unfiltered (broadband image), filtered at HSF and LSF, and hybrids (LSF of an emotional expression superimposed to the HSF of the same face with a neutral expression). All stimuli were also presented rotated on the vertical axis (upside-down) to investigate the global analysis of faces in ageing. Results showed an overall better performance of younger compared to older participants for all conditions except for hybrid stimuli. The expected face-inversion effect was confirmed in both age groups. We conclude that, besides an overall worsening of the perceptual skill with ageing, no specific impairment in the functioning of both the cortical and the subcortical route emerged.
摘要:
情绪通过皮质途径在大脑中处理,负责详细意识识别,主要基于图像高空间频率(HSF),和皮质下路径,负责粗无意识处理,基于低SF(LSF)。然而,人们对这两种途径在老龄化中的功能可能发生的变化知之甚少。在当前的go/no-go在线任务中,当出现快乐或愤怒的面孔时,要求112名年轻人和111名老年人按下按钮(go),并抑制对中性面孔的反应(no-go)。面部刺激未过滤(宽带图像),在HSF和LSF过滤,和杂种(情绪表情的LSF叠加到具有中性表情的同一张脸的HSF)。所有刺激也都在垂直轴上旋转(上下颠倒),以研究衰老中面部的整体分析。结果显示,除混合刺激外,所有条件下,与年龄较大的参与者相比,年轻人的总体表现更好。在两个年龄组中都证实了预期的面部倒置效果。我们的结论是,除了随着年龄的增长,感知技能的整体恶化,皮质和皮质下途径的功能均未出现特定损害.