Consciousness and emotion: attentive vs. pre-attentive elaboration of face processing

Emotional facial expressions represent facial displays of emotions which determine different patterns of muscular correlates, cognitive responses, and brain activation. Autonomic and central nervous systems cooperate in order to provide a coherent pattern of mimic responses to specific contextual cues. Positive (i.e., happiness) vs. negative (i.e., anger) facial expressions are produced respectively in consequences to aversive or appetitive contexts. People are able to consciously produce and comprehend facial expressions, but in many cases, they may obtain emotional information from face by using an unconscious processing (pre-attentive processing).