1. My Brain Reads Pain in Your Face, Before Knowing Your Gender
- Author
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Philip L. Jackson, Maud Frot, François Mauguière, Stéphanie Mazza, Claire Czekala, NeuroPain - CRNL, Centre de recherche en neurosciences de Lyon (CRNL), Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] (UJM)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] (UJM)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Service de neurologie fonctionnelle et d'épileptologie, Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL)-Hôpital neurologique et neurochirurgical Pierre Wertheimer [CHU - HCL], Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL)-Université de Lyon, Laboratoire d'Etude des Mécanismes Cognitifs (EMC), Université Lumière - Lyon 2 (UL2), Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Réadaptation et Intégration Sociale (CIRRIS), and Université Laval [Québec] (ULaval)
- Subjects
Male ,Signal Detection, Psychological ,Time Factors ,MESH: Facial Expression ,Emotions ,Face (sociological concept) ,Masked facial features ,reportability ,Anger ,Developmental psychology ,0302 clinical medicine ,Reading (process) ,10. No inequality ,media_common ,MESH: Altruism ,pain facial expression ,05 social sciences ,MESH: Subliminal Stimulation ,area under the receiver operating characteristic curve ,Facial Expression ,Neurology ,MESH: Young Adult ,Female ,[SDV.NEU]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC] ,MESH: Pain ,Psychology ,Facial Recognition ,Cognitive psychology ,Adult ,Adolescent ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Pain ,Sensory system ,Compassion ,Subliminal Stimulation ,050105 experimental psychology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Young Adult ,Sex Factors ,MESH: Sex Factors ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,MESH: Emotions ,MESH: Adolescent ,Facial expression ,MESH: Humans ,Subliminal stimuli ,MESH: Time Factors ,Your gender ,MESH: Adult ,sensitivity ,MESH: Signal Detection, Psychological ,Altruism ,MESH: Male ,Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine ,MESH: Facial Recognition ,Neurology (clinical) ,MESH: Female ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery - Abstract
Humans are expert at recognizing facial features whether they are variable (emotions) or unchangeable (gender). Because of its huge communicative value, pain might be detected faster in faces than unchangeable features. Based on this assumption, we aimed to find a presentation time that enables subliminal discrimination of pain facial expression without permitting gender discrimination. For 80 individuals, we compared the time needed (50, 100, 150, or 200 milliseconds) to discriminate masked static pain faces among anger and neutral faces with the time needed to discriminate male from female faces. Whether these discriminations were associated with conscious reportability was tested with confidence measures on 40 other individuals. The results showed that, at 100 milliseconds, 75% of participants discriminated pain above chance level, whereas only 20% of participants discriminated the gender. Moreover, this pain discrimination appeared to be subliminal. This priority of pain over gender might exist because, even if pain faces are complex stimuli encoding both the sensory and the affective component of pain, they signal a danger. This supports the evolution theory relating to the necessity of quickly reading aversive emotions to ensure survival but might also be at the basis of altruistic behavior such as help and compassion.This study shows that pain facial expression can be processed subliminally after brief presentation times, which might be helpful for critical emergency situations in clinical settings.
- Published
- 2015
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