TY - JOUR T1 - Impaired Conscious Recognition of Negative Facial Expressions in Patients with Locked-in Syndrome JF - The Journal of Neuroscience JO - J. Neurosci. SP - 7838 LP - 7844 DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6300-09.2010 VL - 30 IS - 23 AU - Francesca Pistoia AU - Massimiliano Conson AU - Luigi Trojano AU - Dario Grossi AU - Marta Ponari AU - Claudio Colonnese AU - Maria L. Pistoia AU - Filippo Carducci AU - Marco SarĂ  Y1 - 2010/06/09 UR - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/30/23/7838.abstract N2 - The involvement of facial mimicry in different aspects of human emotional processing is widely debated. However, little is known about relationships between voluntary activation of facial musculature and conscious recognition of facial expressions. To address this issue, we assessed severely motor-disabled patients with complete paralysis of voluntary facial movements due to lesions of the ventral pons [locked-in syndrome (LIS)]. Patients were required to recognize others' facial expressions and to rate their own emotional responses to presentation of affective scenes. LIS patients were selectively impaired in recognition of negative facial expressions, thus demonstrating that the voluntary activation of mimicry represents a high-level simulation mechanism crucially involved in explicit attribution of emotions. ER -