2022 Volume 12 Issue 2 Pages 75-79
Brain neural activity changes during the observation of emotional visual stimuli can serve as an indicator to reflect the neuropsychological state of the subject. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether differences in emotional state toward the infant of elderly women have an impact on brain neural activity during observing facial expression images. The participants were ２２ elderly women living in the community who were asked to fill up a questionnaire about their sentiments toward infants and identify facial expressions in images of infants. An electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded brain activity during the task of observing facial expression images. The results showed that most subjects had positive sentiments toward the infants, and all subjects were able to discriminate differences in facial expression. Results from EEG analysis revealed that the group with high positive sentiments toward the infants had significantly higher (p<0.05) β-band neural activity in the precuneus while observing images with infant faces than the group with low positive sentiments. These results suggest that when elderly women look at images of infant faces, it induces changes in brain neural activity, and that these changes may be influenced by their emotions toward the infants.
