Distinguished Lecture Series: Paul Whalen (Dartmouth/Hanover)
Dr. Whalen uses brain imaging to study the emotional brain. Specifically, he records the response of the human brain to the facial expressions of others. Dr. Whalen will present data in normal subjects and subjects with anxiety disorders showing how the healthy brain processes ambiguous facial expressions (i.e., surprise, fear) and how this processing goes awry in emotional disorders. To elaborate, neural responses to fearful facial expressions can be interpreted as a response to the lack of predictive clarity associated with these expressions, in addition to a response to negative valence per se. This source ambiguity gives rise to numerous possible interpretations of a fearful expression observed in another person. For example, from the viewer's perspective, a fearful expression might mean that they themselves are in danger (anxious interpretation). Alternatively, this expression could be a call for help (empathic interpretation). Finally, the viewer may perceive that this expression is in response to their dominance in this situation (dominant interpretation). In his lecture, Dr. Whalen will describe behavioral and neuroimaging data addressing how the amygdala and prefrontal cortex handle facial expressions of ambiguous predictive value (generally), as well as the multiple meanings of fear (specifically).
Dr. Paul Whalen is a world-renowned neuroscientist and a leading expert in the research of the human amygdala. Currently, he is a professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College (Hanover, USA).
Paul Whalen, http://whalenlab.info/
