The results suggest that SAD may be characterized by altered neural activity in the fear network during fearful face processing and more distributed structural alterations over the whole brain.
A fearful face signals to the viewer the presence of a threat, thus inducing fear, although the exact mechanisms remain to be determined.
For the first two meetings Nerby tried to reach Cecilie behind the fearful face of Sarah, a girl she thought she knew.
The pregenual ACC and the FI, together with other regions, such as the amygdala, were preferentially activated in response to fearful face priming, suggesting that these regions are involved in the rapid processing of salient facial emotional information.
Twenty healthy young males had to localize a target which was presented in a peripheral location that was either gazed at or not by a preceding dynamic happy or fearful face.
Both groups could correctly identify a "happy" or "fearful" face, a function long associated with the amygdala.
The experiment consisted of one block with 160 trials (containing 80 neutral and 80 fearful face trials).
In addition, amygdala activation increases when fearful face stimuli make direct, rather than averted, eye-contact with the viewer [27].
Second, it may be that a fearful face attracts infants' attention away from the object more than a neutral expression.
The other half were presented with fearful face cues and (50 %, 75, and 100%) neutrandtargets in order to counterbalance the facial expressions on Go and Nogo trials.
Further, it may be that infants simply associated the fearful face with the simultaneously presented object without regarding the adult's gaze direction.
