Chaona Chen

University of Glasgow | UofG · Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology

Human facial expressions are complex, multi-component signals that can communicate rich information about emotions,1, 2, 3, 4, 5 including specific categories, such as “anger,” and broader dimensions, such as “negative valence, high arousal.”6, 7, 8 An enduring question is how this complex signaling is achieved. Communication theory predicts that m...

One of the longest standing debates in the emotion sciences is whether emotions are represented as discrete categories such as happy or sad or as continuous fundamental dimensions such as valence and arousal. Theories of communication make specific predictions about the facial expression signals that would represent emotions as either discrete or d...

Facial expressions support effective social communication by dynamically transmitting complex, multi-layered messages, such as emotion categories and their intensity. How facial expressions achieve this signalling task remains unknown. Here, we address this question by identifying the specific facial movements that convey two key components of emot...

Real-world studies show that the facial expressions produced during pain and orgasm—two different and intense affective experiences—are virtually indistinguishable. However, this finding is counterintuitive, because facial expressions are widely considered to be a powerful tool for social interaction. Consequently, debate continues as to whether th...

Social robots are now part of human society, destined for schools, hospitals, and homes to perform a va- riety of tasks. To engage their human users, social robots must be equipped with the essential social skill of facial expression communication. Yet, even state-of-the-art social robots are limited in this ability because they often rely on a res...

Understanding the cultural commonalities and specificities of facial expressions of emotion remains a central goal of Psychology. However, recent progress has been stayed by dichotomous debates (e.g., nature versus nurture) that have created silos of empirical and theoretical knowledge. Now, an emerging interdisciplinary scientific culture is broad...

As a highly social species, humans regularly exchange sophisticated social signals to support everyday life and the functioning of wider society. One of the most important aspects of social interaction is communicating negative (i.e., pain) and positive (i.e., pleasure) internal states. Although pain and pleasure are diametrically opposite concepts...

Visual categorization is the brain computation that reduces high-dimensional information in the visual environment into a smaller set of meaningful categories. An important problem in visual neuroscience is to identify the visual information that the brain must represent and then use to categorize visual inputs. Here we introduce a new mathematical...

With the advent of the digital economy, increasing globalization and cultural integration, cross-cultural social communication is increasing, where the mutual understanding of mental states (e.g., confusion, bored) is a key social skill. One of the most powerful tools in social communication is the face, which can flexibly create a broad spectrum o...