Neural correlates of conscious processing of emotional faces: Evidence from event-related potentials.
Neuropsychologia April 15, 2023 Bo Sun, Xianqing Zeng, Xiaomin Chen et al.
Conscious processing of emotional faces involves both early and late neural correlates of consciousness, while neutral faces involve only early correlates. Using an inattentional blindness paradigm with happy, fearful, and neutral faces, visual awareness negativity (VAN) was associated with consciousness for all faces, but late positivity (LP) was linked to consciousness only for emotional faces. Source localization showed LP for emotional faces in frontal and parietal lobes, with no significant activation for neutral faces. Time-frequency analysis revealed increased alpha and theta oscillations during conscious processing, suggesting suppression of irrelevant stimuli. The findings indicate that integrating early and late consciousness theories better explains how emotional faces are consciously processed.