Spanish version: sl.ugr.es/amorES

‘Emotional tachycardia’ (a deceleration in heart rate followed by a quick acceleration); activation of the zygomaticus, the facial muscle responsible for allowing us to smile; or an increase in brain activity upon seeing the image of a loved one are some of the patterns that researchers from the University of Granada’s Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Centre (CIMCYC) have identified

Scientists from the University of Granada (UGR) who belong to the Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Centre (Centro de Investigación Mente, Cerebro y Comportamiento, CIMYC) conducted the most complete study to date on the physiological mechanisms that love causes in people, measuring these effects at a central (that is, in the brain) and peripheral (regarding the heart, muscles and perspiration) level.

Their work determined that when a person is in love and sees a picture of the face of their loved one, what the UGR scientists called «emotional tachycardia» takes place, in which the heart experiences an initial deceleration (the heart rate lowers for a few seconds) and later accelerates rapidly. This also occurs when seeing pictures of a loved family member, such as a mother or father.

Additionally, the sight of the loved one’s face increases perspiration or the electrical conductivity of the skin from the first 1.5 seconds and on, causing activation in the zygomaticus facial muscle, which is responsible for smiling. This last pattern took place to a greater extent in women than in men, most likely because of cultural reasons, as women more easily express their emotions than men.

Lastly, at a central level, the brain activity that takes place is much greater when we see pictures of the people we love than of those we do not know.

The researchers that conducted this work belong to the Human Psychophysiology and Health Laboratory of the CIMCYC and, since 2010, have been analyzing the physiological patterns produced by positive emotions in subjects.

Loved ones’ faces

In order to carry out this study, the scientists worked with a sample of students from the UGR School of Psychology, men and women between the ages of 20 and 29. The subjects were asked to take a black and white picture of a certain size of their mothers and fathers, as well as their significant others, if they were in a relationship of at least six months.

The CIMCYC researchers, Jaime Vila Castellar and Pedro Guerra Muñoz, explained that the pictures, which were projected randomly for four seconds during the experiment, were to be neutral, without happy or sad facial expressions that could interfere with the participants’ reaction.

Subsequently, the scientists conducted an experiment with all the participants, in which they placed sensors on the subjects’ faces, heads and hands and monitored their central and peripheral physiological activity, while these subjects were shown pictures of five faces: two of loved ones, two of people they did not know and one of a baby (as a control group).

This study of the physiological patterns of love carried out by the UGR scientists also revealed that this positive emotion guards against stress. Namely, when the participants were looking at pictures of loved ones, such as a father, mother or significant other, when given a scare through a loud noise emitted through headphones, the jolt response was much lower than when this occurred without looking at the picture.

Bibliographical References:

Guerra, P., Campagnoli, R. R., Vico, C., Volchan, E., Anllo-Vento, L., & Vila, J. (2011). Filial versus romantic love: contributions from peripheral and central electrophysiology. Biological psychology, 88(2), 196-203.

Guerra, P., Sánchez-Adam, A., Anllo-Vento, L., Ramírez, I., & Vila, J. (2012). Viewing loved faces inhibits defense reactions: a health-promotion mechanism?.PloS one, 7(7), e41631.

Guerra, P., Vico, C., Campagnoli, R., Sánchez, A., Anllo-Vento, L., & Vila, J. (2012). Affective processing of loved familiar faces: integrating central and peripheral electrophysiological measures. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 85(1), 79-87.

Sánchez-Adam, A. (2013). Mecanismos corticales y periféricos del procesamiento afectivo de caras familiares: Estudio de la emoción asociada a la identidad (Tesis Doctoral, Universidad de Granada).

Vico Fuillerat, C. (2016). Mecanismos corticales y periféricos del procesamiento afectivo de caras: emociones positivas (Tesis Doctoral, Universidad de Granada).

Vico, C., Guerra, P., Robles, H., Vila, J., & Anllo-Vento, L. (2010). Affective processing of loved faces: contributions from peripheral and central electrophysiology. Neuropsychologia, 48(10), 2894-2902.

1. UGR researchers Pedro Guerra Muñoz y Jaime Vila Castellar, authors of this study

Contact:

Pedro Guerra Muñoz
Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológico de la UGR
E-mail: pguerra@ugr.es

Jaime Vila Castellar
Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológico de la UGR
E-mail: jvila@ugr.es

Spanish version: sl.ugr.es/sistema_decisionesES

French version: sl.ugr.es/sistema_decisionesFR

Scientists from the University of Granada have designed a consensus model that helps making decisions: from choosing a wine in a restaurant to helping different departments of a bank involved in the configuration of the stock portfolios in the investment of their funds

This work has received a major award at the Annual Congress of the IEEE System, Man and Cybernetics Society, held in Budapest (Hungary)

Scientists from the universities of Granada and Cadiz have designed a new automatic system that allows to make decisions or solve daily problems when the different agents involved do not agree.

This consensus model, which could be applied through a cellphone ‘app’ in the next stage, has many different applications: from choosing a wine in a restaurant to helping different departments of a bank involved in the configuration of the stock portfolios to invest their funds.

The system is also useful for setting diets, for the selective distribution of information in libraries, or for establishing medical and prevention treatments of lower back pain in a personalized way through the recommendation of physiotherapy exercises.

The work has been published in the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems journal, one of the most prestigious journals in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and it has received the award for the best scientific article of the year 2014 at the IEEE System, Man and Cybernetics Society Annual Congress, held in Budapest (Hungary). Its main author, professor Enrique Herrera-Viedma, from the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada (UGR), has been in charge of receiving the award.

It is a model of consensus among heterogeneous experts with different levels of relevance in the group. The researchers propose a system that combines the prestige or specific weight of each expert along with a negotiation model with the experts, which suggests the modification of the preferences according to their importance in the group in order to reach consensus in few iterations (act of repeating a process with the intention of achieving a desired goal).

Complex decision-making

Not surprisingly, the UGR scientists have been working for years on the development of these type of consensus models, which allow the creation of automatic systems to aid in making complex decisions, in which reaching a solution to a problem may involve several decision-makers (or agents) who work and negotiate together in order to reach an agreement or consensus on what would be the best option among a set of possible solutions.

This problem can be complicated when, in addition, it is necessary to consider different criteria and even different degrees of importance of said criteria or decision makers. The latter aspect is precisely the one analyzed in the awarded work.

This article is part of the line of research in the development of consensus models for making decisions that the UGR Soft Computing and Intelligent Information Systems research group has been carrying out for years. Not surprisingly, the professors in charge of the group, Francisco Herrera Trigueros and Enrique Herrera-Viedma, have a long history and extensive international recognition, and they collaborate with international researchers of great prestige.

The results of this line of research have been published in the most relevant journals about Artificial Intelligence, and they have produced, among others, eight highly cited publications (in the Top 1% of their category in the period 2005-2015), as well as several applications and software tools.

1 and 2. UGR professor Enrique Herrera-Viedma receives the award for the best scientific article, in the SMC2016 Congress held in Budapest (Hungary)

3. The designed consensus model has many very different applications, such as choosing a wine in a restaurant

Bibliographic references:

A New Consensus Model for Group Decision Making Problems With Non-Homogeneous Experts. Ignacio Javier Pérez, Francisco Javier Cabrerizo, Sergio Alonso and Enrique Herrera-Viedma. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 44, NO. 4, APRIL 2014

Contacto:

Enrique Herrera-Viedma

Departamento de Ciencia de la Computación e Inteligencia Artificial de la Universidad de Granada

Telephone: 958 244 258

E-mail: viedma@decsai.ugr.es

Web: http://decsai.ugr.es/~viedma

Francisco Herrera Triguero

Departamento de Ciencia de la Computación e Inteligencia Artificial de la Universidad de Granada

Telephone: 958 240 598

E-mail: herrera@decsai.ugr.es