Abstract:

How does the human brain automatically process changing emotional information? Based on the theory of mismatch negativity (MMN), which is generated from our auditory system, a new concept named expression mismatch negativity (EMMN) has been developed by researchers. EMMN is regarded as the index of pre-attentive processing. EMMN is primarily responsible for detecting the variation of information that contains emotional details, and this is where it differs from the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) that accounts for processing common visual information. Current review mainly discusses how EMMN differs in regard to different facial expression, gender, and fluid intelligence. We also focused on EMMN in aberrated populations such as autism, major depression, and schizophrenia. In addition, we sheds light on the mechanism of EMMN through a perspective based on the predictive-coding theory. In addition to further exploring the neural mechanism of EMMN, future studies should focus particularly on the application of EMMN in clinical diagnosis and therapy, as well as pay close attention to the feature of EMMN in different emotional cues.

Key words: facial expression, pre-attentive processing, mismatch negativity, N170, oddball paradigm