2020 年 39 巻 1 号 p. 92-95
Emotional facial expressions are primary media for human emotional communication. Although functional neuroimaging studies have revealed brain activity associated with emotional expression processing, its temporal profile remains unclear. I review our two studies combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) in an effort to resolve this issue. In Study 1, MEG was recorded while participants observed dynamic facial expressions and source-reconstruction analyses utilizing previous fMRI data were conducted. In Study 2, fMRI and MEG data while participants viewed dynamic facial expressions were analyzed using dynamic causal modeling. The results revealed neural activity and connectivity in response to dynamic facial expressions at high spatial and temporal resolutions. These findings suggest the effectiveness of combination of neuroimaging and electrophysiological measures to identify the neural mechanisms underlying emotional expression processing.
