Neuroscience Letters 531 (2012) 149–154 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Neuroscience Letters jou rn al h om epage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neulet Sensitivity to posed and genuine displays of happiness and sadness: A fMRI study T.L. McLellan a,∗ , J.C. Wilcke a,b , L. Johnston a , R. Watts c , L.K. Miles d a Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, New Zealand b Department of Fundamental Neurosciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland c Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, New Zealand d School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom h i g h l i g h t s ◮ Neural activity when judging posed and genuine facial expressions was different. ◮ Genuine smiles were associated with increased limbic activity. ◮ Genuine sad faces were associated with prefrontal and premotor areas. ◮ Sensitivity to sadness correlated with activity in left superior frontal gyrus. a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 31 July 2012 Received in revised form 3 October 2012 Accepted 11 October 2012 Keywords: fMRI Brain activity Emotion Facial expression Emotion recognition a b s t r a c t The ability to distinguish posed from genuine facial displays of emotion and to act accordingly is a fun- damental social skill. To investigate the neural correlates underpinning this sensitivity, we compared changes in brain activity associated with judging posed and genuine facial displays of happiness and sad- ness using fMRI. Photographs of displays were presented to 7 right-handed females who judged whether the person was feeling the target emotion and made yes/no responses. Results showed activity increases during the observation of genuine compared to posed happy displays in the left medial superior frontal gyrus (BA 9) and the middle cingulate cortex bilaterally (BAs 24 and 31). The same comparison for sad displays showed increased activity in the left medial superior frontal gyrus (BA 8), and in the right middle and triangular inferior frontal gyri (both BA 46). Participants who exhibited higher sensitivity to sad dis- plays showed larger activity difference in the left medial superior frontal gyrus (BA 8). The present study provides evidence of differential neural activity when judging posed versus genuine facial displays of emotions. Further research is required to elucidate how this might impact social affective neuroscience and in what ways genuine facial displays can enhance our understanding of emotion perception. © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Facial displays provide accessible information for the social per- ceiver to relate adaptively to their environment, but they are not always straightforward. This is because individuals can at least partially decouple their facial display from how they actually feel [10], utilising the display for a variety of reasons other than just signalling their emotional experience [29]. It has, therefore, been argued that facial displays are not homogeneous and that consid- eration of the different information provided by posed (unfelt) and genuine (felt) displays needs to be made [25,27]. ∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand. Tel.: +64 3 365 0422; fax: +64 3 364 2181. E-mail address: traceylmclellan@gmail.com (T.L. McLellan). A genuine facial display occurs during the experience of a par- ticular emotional state spontaneously, and is congruent with the emotional experience. Posed facial displays on the other hand are purposefully communicative tools for behaviours ranging from deception to social compliance [9]. Both posed and genuine facial displays are legitimate gestures and each are commonly displayed in day-to-day life. However, each provides different information and is consequently meaningfully different to the social perceiver [25,27,13,15]. Healthy young adults have been shown as sensitive to these meaningful differences [25,28,26], which has also been found to influences subsequent behaviour [15,30]. To date, the neu- ral correlates underpinning this fundamental social skill have not been identified. We address this issue by comparing neural activity associated with judging posed and genuine facial displays using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We predicted dif- ferent activity patterns during the observation of these two types of facial displays. In addition, there is sufficient agreement that 0304-3940/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2012.10.039