The Impact of the Perception of Primary Facial Emotions on Corticospinal Excitability

Introduction

This database includes the raw data linked with the paper “ The impact of the perception of primary facial emotions on corticospinal excitability” published on Brain Sciences. In this paper, we reported healthy individuals’ motor-evoked potentials (MEP) elicited via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) while  viewing faces expressing the primary emotions. The present paper investigates whether the increase in MEP amplitude while participants view emotional stimuli depends on the specific emotional meaning conveyed by the stimulus.

Methods

We used single-pulse TMS to elicit MEPs from the left motor cortex (M1) while healthy participants (N=22) passively viewed the same faces expressing either anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise, and no emotion (in different blocks).

Results (in brief)

We found that the observation of fearful, angry, disgusted, and happy facial expressions was associated with a significant increase in the MEPs’ amplitude compared to neutral facial expressions, with a comparable enhancement in the CSE occurring across these emotions. In turn, viewing sad and surprised faces did not modulate the CSE, suggesting  that only facial expressions that signal (real or potential) danger or a rewarding stimulus, but not emotional facial expressions per se, are capable of activating action-related mechanisms.