Browsing by Author "Lanfranco, Renzo C."

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    In your phase: neural phase synchronisation underlies visual imagery of faces
    (2021) Canales-Johnson, Andres; Lanfranco, Renzo C.; Morales, Juan Pablo; Martinez-Pernia, David; Valdes, Joaquin; Ezquerro-Nassar, Alejandro; Rivera-Rei, Alvaro; Ibanez, Agustin; Chennu, Srivas; Bekinschtein, Tristan A.; Huepe, David; Noreika, Valdas
    Mental imagery is the process through which we retrieve and recombine information from our memory to elicit the subjective impression of "seeing with the mind's eye". In the social domain, we imagine other individuals while recalling our encounters with them or modelling alternative social interactions in future. Many studies using imaging and neurophysiological techniques have shown several similarities in brain activity between visual imagery and visual perception, and have identified frontoparietal, occipital and temporal neural components of visual imagery. However, the neural connectivity between these regions during visual imagery of socially relevant stimuli has not been studied. Here we used electroencephalography to investigate neural connectivity and its dynamics between frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal electrodes during visual imagery of faces. We found that voluntary visual imagery of faces is associated with long-range phase synchronisation in the gamma frequency range between frontoparietal electrode pairs and between occipitoparietal electrode pairs. In contrast, no effect of imagery was observed in the connectivity between occipitotemporal electrode pairs. Gamma range synchronisation between occipitoparietal electrode pairs predicted subjective ratings of the contour definition of imagined faces. Furthermore, we found that visual imagery of faces is associated with an increase of short-range frontal synchronisation in the theta frequency range, which temporally preceded the long-range increase in the gamma synchronisation. We speculate that the local frontal synchrony in the theta frequency range might be associated with an effortful top-down mnemonic reactivation of faces. In contrast, the long-range connectivity in the gamma frequency range along the fronto-parieto-occipital axis might be related to the endogenous binding and subjective clarity of facial visual features.
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    Learning emotional dialects: A British population study of cross-cultural communication
    (2023) Tsikandilakis, Myron; Bali, Persefoni; Lanfranco, Renzo C.; Kausel, Leonie; Yu, Zhaoliang; Boncompte, Gonzalo; Karlis, Alexandros-Konstantinos; Alshammari, Alkadi; Li, Ruiyi; Milbank, Alison; Burdett, Michael; Mevel, Pierre-Alexis; Madan, Christopher; Derrfuss, Jan
    The aim of the current research was to explore whether we can improve the recognition of cross-cultural freely-expressed emotional faces in British participants. We tested several methods for improving the recognition of freely-expressed emotional faces, such as different methods for presenting other-culture expressions of emotion from individuals from Chile, New Zealand and Singapore in two experimental stages. In the first experimental stage, in phase one, participants were asked to identify the emotion of cross-cultural freely-expressed faces. In the second phase, different cohorts were presented with interactive side-by-side, back-to-back and dynamic morphing of cross-cultural freely-expressed emotional faces, and control conditions. In the final phase, we repeated phase one using novel stimuli. We found that all non-control conditions led to recognition improvements. Morphing was the most effective condition for improving the recognition of cross-cultural emotional faces. In the second experimental stage, we presented morphing to different cohorts including own-to-other and other-to-own freely-expressed cross-cultural emotional faces and neutral-to-emotional and emotional-to-neutral other-culture freely-expressed emotional faces. All conditions led to recognition improvements and the presentation of freely-expressed own-to-other cultural-emotional faces provided the most effective learning. These findings suggest that training can improve the recognition of cross-cultural freely-expressed emotional expressions.
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    "There Is No (Where a) Face Like Home": Recognition and Appraisal Responses to Masked Facial Dialects of Emotion in Four Different National Cultures
    (2021) Tsikandilakis, Myron; Yu, Zhaoliang; Kausel, Leonie; Boncompte, Gonzalo; Lanfranco, Renzo C.; Oxner, Matt; Bali, Persefoni; Urale Leong, Poutasi; Qing, Man; Paterakis, George; Caci, Salvatore; Milbank, Alison; Mevel, Pierre-Alexis; Carmel, David; Madan, Christopher; Derrfuss, Jan; Chapman, Peter
    The theory of universal emotions suggests that certain emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise and happiness can be encountered cross-culturally. These emotions are expressed using specific facial movements that enable human communication. More recently, theoretical and empirical models have been used to propose that universal emotions could be expressed via discretely different facial movements in different cultures due to the non-convergent social evolution that takes place in different geographical areas. This has prompted the consideration that own-culture emotional faces have distinct evolutionary important sociobiological value and can be processed automatically, and without conscious awareness. In this paper, we tested this hypothesis using backward masking. We showed, in two different experiments per country of origin, to participants in Britain, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore, backward masked own and other-culture emotional faces. We assessed detection and recognition performance, and self-reports for emotionality and familiarity. We presented thorough cross-cultural experimental evidence that when using Bayesian assessment of non-parametric receiver operating characteristics and hit-versus-miss detection and recognition response analyses, masked faces showing own cultural dialects of emotion were rated higher for emotionality and familiarity compared to other-culture emotional faces and that this effect involved conscious awareness.