The Role of the Context of Cognitive Activity in the Recognition of Facial Emotional Expressions

The effects of the types of additional cognitive tasks (visuospatial or semantic) added to the context of experiments with a set to recognition of an emotionally negative facial expression were studied in healthy human subjects. Loading on working memory decreased the plasticity of the set: changes in the situation increased the number of erroneous recognitions of the facial expression. Differences were seen in the nature of erroneous recognitions (assimilative and contrast illusions) depending on the additional task. Analysis of coherence functions of cortical electrical potentials in the low-frequency alpha (8–10 Hz) and beta (14–20 Hz) ranges supported the hypothesis that increases in the loading on working memory lead to decreases in the involvement of the frontal mechanisms of selective attention in the formation and actualization of the set. This leads to slowing of the process of set shifting. Loading on working memory induced hemisphere asymmetry in prestimulus electrical activity: spatial synchronization of theta potentials significantly decreased in the right hemisphere and increased in the left. The functional significance of coherence connections in the theta range between the dorsolateral part of the prefrontal cortex and the temporal area in the right hemisphere for the process of set substitution is discussed.