ABSTRACT Smile aesthetic, known as the static and dynamic relationship of the dentition and supporting structures to the facial soft tissues, is one of the most important elements of facial attractiveness. The objective of the study was to assess the perception of smile aesthetics and attractiveness through digital image manipulation of aesthetic variables and to compare those perceptions according to diverse sociodemographic data among female Saudi laypeople attending the dental clinic. A crosssectional study of 193 female Saudi participants were randomly selected and consented to answer the study questionnaire. Nine smile photograph images were created to compare different smile aesthetic perceptions. Two groups were recruited: 120 participants in the first group (under 30 years old) and 73 participants in the second group (30 years old or above). All participants in both groups were asked to choose the attractiveness of each smile image using multiple-choice options. A statistically significant finding showed that normal buccal corridors were chosen as the most attractive smile by 42.5% of the participants in the younger group and by a significantly higher ratio of the participants with a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education at 49% (p < 0.05). Laypeople’s preferences regarding smile attractiveness vary, but a normal appearance was the ideal choice for the majority. Orthodontic treatment should consider the general sociocultural understanding of smile perception.
Esthetics, Dental--psychology ; Facial Recognition ; Saudi Arabia

It is widely acknowledged that holistic processing is a key characteristic of face perception. Although holistic processing implies the automatic integration of face parts, it is unclear whether such processing requires the awareness of face parts. Here, we investigated the interactions between visible face parts and face parts rendered invisible using continuous flash suppression (CFS). In the first experiment with the upper half-face visible and the lower half-face invisible, the results showed that perceived face identity was influenced by the invisible lower half-face, suggesting that integration occurs between the visible and invisible face parts, a variant of the "composite face effect". In the second experiment, we investigated the influence of visible face parts on the processing of invisible face parts, as measured by the time it took for the invisible parts to break out from CFS. The results showed a visible-to-invisible facilitation effect, that the aligned invisible face parts broke through CFS faster than when the visible and invisible face parts were misaligned. Visible eyes had a stronger influence on the invisible nose/mouth than the other way around. Such facilitation of processing from visible to invisible parts was also found when Chinese characters were used as stimuli. These results show that information integration occurs across the consciousness boundary.
Awareness ; Consciousness ; Eye ; Face ; Facial Recognition ; Photic Stimulation

BACKGROUND: The facial expression of medical staff has been known to greatly affect the psychological state of patients, making them feel uneasy or conversely, cheering them up. By clarifying the characteristics of facial expression recognition ability in patients with Lewy body disease, the aim of this study is to examine points to facilitate smooth communication between caregivers and patients with the disease whose cognitive function has deteriorated. METHODS: During the period from March 2016 to July 2017, we examined the characteristics of recognition of the six facial expressions of "happiness," "sadness," "fear," "anger," "surprise," and "disgust" for 107 people aged 60 years or more, both outpatient and inpatient, who hospital specialists had diagnosed with Lewy body diseases of Parkinson's disease, Parkinson's disease with dementia, and dementia with Lewy bodies. Based on facial expression recognition test results, we classified them by cluster analysis and clarified features of each type. RESULTS: In patients with Lewy body disease, happiness was kept unaffected by aging, age of onset, duration of the disease, cognitive function, and apathy; however, recognizing the facial expression of fear was difficult. In addition, due to aging, cognitive decline, and apathy, the facial expression recognition ability for sadness and anger decreased. In particular, cognitive decline reduced recognition of all of the facial expressions except for happiness. The test accuracy rates were classified into three types using the cluster analysis: "stable type," "mixed type," and "reduced type". In the "reduced type", the overall facial recognition ability declined except happiness, and in the mixed type, recognition ability of anger particularly declined. CONCLUSION There were several facial expressions that the Lewy body disease patients were unable to accurately identify. Caregivers are recommended to make an effort to compensate for such situations with language or body contact, etc., as a way to convey correct feeling to the patients of each type.
Aged ; Aged, 80 and over ; Cluster Analysis ; Cognition ; physiology ; Emotions ; Facial Expression ; Facial Recognition ; physiology ; Female ; Humans ; Lewy Body Disease ; physiopathology ; psychology ; Male ; Middle Aged

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is considered to play a crucial role in many high-level functions, such as cognitive control and emotional regulation. Many studies have reported that the DLPFC can be activated during the processing of emotional information in tasks requiring working memory. However, it is still not clear whether modulating the activity of the DLPFC influences emotional perception in a detection task. In the present study, using transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS), we investigated (1) whether modulating the right DLPFC influences emotional face processing in a detection task, and (2) whether the DLPFC plays equal roles in processing positive and negative emotional faces. The results showed that anodal tDCS over the right DLPFC specifically facilitated the perception of positive faces, but did not influence the processing of negative faces. In addition, anodal tDCS over the right primary visual cortex enhanced performance in the detection task regardless of emotional valence. Our findings suggest, for the first time, that modulating the right DLPFC influences emotional face perception, especially faces showing positive emotion.
Adult ; Emotions ; Facial Recognition ; physiology ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Neuropsychological Tests ; Prefrontal Cortex ; physiology ; Social Perception ; Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation ; Young Adult

Facial and vocal expressions are essential modalities mediating the perception of emotion and social communication. Nonetheless, currently little is known about how emotion perception and its neural substrates differ across facial expression and vocal prosody. To clarify this issue, functional MRI scans were acquired in Study 1, in which participants were asked to discriminate the valence of emotional expression (angry, happy or neutral) from facial, vocal, or bimodal stimuli. In Study 2, we used an affective priming task (unimodal materials as primers and bimodal materials as target) and participants were asked to rate the intensity, valence, and arousal of the targets. Study 1 showed higher accuracy and shorter response latencies in the facial than in the vocal modality for a happy expression. Whole-brain analysis showed enhanced activation during facial compared to vocal emotions in the inferior temporal-occipital regions. Region of interest analysis showed a higher percentage signal change for facial than for vocal anger in the superior temporal sulcus. Study 2 showed that facial relative to vocal priming of anger had a greater influence on perceived emotion for bimodal targets, irrespective of the target valence. These findings suggest that facial expression is associated with enhanced emotion perception compared to equivalent vocal prosodies.
Adult ; Brain Mapping ; methods ; Cerebral Cortex ; diagnostic imaging ; physiology ; Emotions ; physiology ; Facial Expression ; Facial Recognition ; physiology ; Female ; Humans ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Psychomotor Performance ; physiology ; Social Perception ; Speech Perception ; physiology ; Young Adult

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the effect of social skills training (SST) on facial emotion recognition and discrimination in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). METHODS: Twenty-three children aged 7 to 10 years participated in our SST. They included 15 children diagnosed with ADHD and 8 with ASD. The participants' parents completed the Korean version of the Child Behavior Checklist (K-CBCL), the ADHD Rating Scale, and Conner's Scale at baseline and post-treatment. The participants completed the Korean Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV (K-WISC-IV) and the Advanced Test of Attention at baseline and the Penn Emotion Recognition and Discrimination Task at baseline and post-treatment. RESULTS: No significant changes in facial emotion recognition and discrimination occurred in either group before and after SST. However, when controlling for the processing speed of K-WISC and the social subscale of K-CBCL, the ADHD group showed more improvement in total (p=0.049), female (p=0.039), sad (p=0.002), mild (p=0.015), female extreme (p=0.005), male mild (p=0.038), and Caucasian (p=0.004) facial expressions than did the ASD group. CONCLUSION: SST improved facial expression recognition for children with ADHD more effectively than it did for children with ASD, in whom additional training to help emotion recognition and discrimination is needed.
Autism Spectrum Disorder* ; Autistic Disorder* ; Checklist ; Child Behavior ; Child* ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Facial Expression ; Facial Recognition ; Female ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Male ; Parents ; Social Skills*

No abstract available.
Face ; Pattern Recognition, Visual ; Human ; Sociology, Medical ; Facial Expression ; Facial Muscles ; Animals ; Biological Evolution ; Species Specificity

A modified "cross-modal delayed response" paradigm was used to investigate whether the visual mismatch negativity can be elicited by cartoon facial expressions, and to define the mechanism underlying automatic processing of facial expressions. Subjects taking part in the tests were instructed to discriminate the type of the tones they heard as quickly and accurately as possible, and to act merely when they heard the response imperative signal. Neutral, happy and angry faces were presented during intervals between a tone and a response imperative signal. Visual mismatch negativity (VMMN) was obtained by subtracting the event - related potential (ERP) elicited by neutral faces from that elicited by happy faces or angry faces. The angry-related VMMN was more negative than happy-related VMMN, and both were more negative in the left than in the right cerebral hemisphere. The results indicated that VMMN can be elicited by the cartoon facial expressions, and the facial expressions can be processed automatically.
Adult ; Brain ; physiology ; Cartoons as Topic ; Evoked Potentials, Visual ; physiology ; Facial Expression ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Pattern Recognition, Visual ; physiology ; Photic Stimulation ; Visual Perception ; physiology ; Young Adult

Facial paralysis is a frequently-occurring disease, which causes the loss of the voluntary muscles on one side of the face due to the damages the facial nerve and results in an inability to close the eye and leads to dropping of the angle of the mouth. There have been few objective methods to quantitatively diagnose it and assess this disease for clinically treating the patients so far. The skin temperature distribution of a healthy human body exhibits a contralateral symmetry. Facial paralysis usually causes an alteration of the temperature distribution of body with the disease. This paper presents the use of the histogram distance of bilateral local binary pattern (LBP) in the facial infrared thermography to measure the asymmetry degree of facial temperature distribution for objective assessing the severity of facial paralysis. Using this new method, we performed a controlled trial to assess the facial nerve function of the healthy subjects and the patients with Bell's palsy respectively. The results showed that the mean sensitivity and specificity of this method are 0.86 and 0.89 respectively. The correlation coefficient between the asymmetry degree of facial temperature distribution and the severity of facial paralysis is an average of 0.657. Therefore, the histogram distance of local binary pattern in the facial infrared thermography is an efficient clinical indicator with respect to the diagnosis and assessment of facial paralysis.
Facial Paralysis ; diagnosis ; physiopathology ; Humans ; Infrared Rays ; Pattern Recognition, Automated ; methods ; Skin Temperature ; Thermography ; instrumentation

The method of event-related potentials (ERP) was used to study the gender difference in face recognition. The stimuli in the experiment were 10 upright and 10 inverted face photos. The subjects, half female and half male, were asked to judge whether the face was upright or inverted. The results showed that the N170 wave forms were observed in the occipito-temporal regions and they were found exhibiting brain's right hemispheric dominance. The stimuli of different gender photos were noticed to have no significant impact on the N170 wave forms, but there were significant differentce in the amplitude and latency period of N170 between different gender participants. Moreover, there was marked difference in the latency period of the male participants watching the same gender face and different gender face. Similar results were not found in the ERP's latency period of female participants.
Adult ; Brain ; physiology ; Electroencephalography ; Evoked Potentials ; Face ; Facial Expression ; Female ; Form Perception ; physiology ; Humans ; Male ; Pattern Recognition, Visual ; physiology ; Recognition (Psychology) ; Sex Factors ; Young Adult