Quantifying dynamic facial expressions under naturalistic conditions
- University of Newcastle Australia, Australia
- University of Western Australia, Australia
- University of New South Wales, Australia
Abstract
Facial affect is expressed dynamically - a giggle, grimace, or an agitated frown. However, the characterization of human affect has relied almost exclusively on static images. This approach cannot capture the nuances of human communication or support the naturalistic assessment of affective disorders. Using the latest in machine vision and systems modelling, we studied dynamic facial expressions of people viewing emotionally salient film clips. We found that the apparent complexity of dynamic facial expressions can be captured by a small number of simple spatiotemporal states - composites of distinct facial actions, each expressed with a unique spectral fingerprint. Sequential expression of these states is common across individuals viewing the same film stimuli but varies in those with the melancholic subtype of major depressive disorder. This approach provides a platform for translational research, capturing dynamic facial expressions under naturalistic conditions and enabling new quantitative tools for the study of affective disorders and related mental illnesses.
Data availability
The DISFA dataset is publically available at http://mohammadmahoor.com/disfa/, and can be accessed by application at http://mohammadmahoor.com/disfa-contact-form/. The melancholia dataset is not publically available due to ethical and privacy considerations for patients, and because the original ethics approval does not permit sharing this data.
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DISFA: A Spontaneous Facial Action Intensity Databasehttp://mohammadmahoor.com/.
Article and author information
Author details
Michael Breakspear
Funding
Health Education and Training Institute Award in Psychiatry and Mental Health
- Jayson Jeganathan
Rainbow Foundation
- Jayson Jeganathan
- Michael Breakspear
National Health and Medical Research Council (1118153,10371296,1095227)
- Michael Breakspear
Australian Research Council (CE140100007)
- Michael Breakspear
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: Participants provided informed consent for the study. Ethics approval was obtained from the University of New South Wales (HREC-08077) and the University of Newcastle (H-2020-0137). Figure 1a shows images of a person's face from the DISFA dataset. Consent to reproduce their image in publications was obtained by the original DISFA authors, and is detailed in the dataset agreement (http://mohammadmahoor.com/disfa-contact-form/) and the original paper (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6475933).
Copyright
© 2022, Jeganathan et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Quantifying dynamic facial expressions under naturalistic conditions
eLife 11:e79581.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79581
