Abstract:

Fear has been often given priority to effective processing for the need to evade threatening stimuli. Most of researches have probed the influence of high and low spatial frequencies on the processing of fearful faces from the perspective of the two-channel model. Low spatial frequency components of the fearful face can be processed preferentially in the subcortical pathway. The high spatial frequency mainly processes the fearful faces through the cortical pathway. On this basis, researchers have proposed multiple pathways. The purpose of this paper is to review the subcortical, cortical and multiple pathways from the physiological perspective, and then organize the effects that high/low spatial frequencies on the processing of fearful faces in the various pathways and propose the controversies. Finally, we suggested several focuses that could be studied in the future.

Key words: spatial frequency, fearful facial expression, subcortical pathway, cortical pathway, multiple pathways