The article titled “Contingency Learning in Social Cues: Neural Engagement and Emotional Modulation by Facial Expressions,” co-authored by Assoc. Prof. Burcu Uysal, a faculty member of the Department of Psychology at Ibn Haldun University, has been published in issue 19 of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Addressing the field of Cognitive Neuroscience, the study examines how social cues are perceived in the context of probability learning and how the brain responds to these associations.
In the study, three different probability associations (positive, zero, and negative) were tested using happy and sad facial expressions. Functional MRI (fMRI) was used to evaluate attention and predictive processing, revealing that participants were able to distinguish between different probability types regardless of emotional expression. However, sad facial expressions were found to lead to a weaker perception of causality, particularly under zero and negative association conditions. These perceptions were subsequently supported by activations observed in frontal brain regions such as the inferior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, and anterior cingulate cortex.
The findings, published as a scientific research article, demonstrate that relationships inconsistent with social expectations are processed differently at the neurocognitive level.
