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Facial expression recognition is mediated by a distributed neural system in humans that involves multiple, bilateral regions. There are six basic facial expressions that may be recognized in humans fear, sadness, surprise, happiness, anger, and disgust ; however, fearful faces and surprised faces are easily confused in rapid presentation. The functional organization of the facial expression recognition system embodies a distinction between these two emotions, which is investigated in the present study. A core system that includes the right parahippocampal gyrus BA 30 , fusiform gyrus, and amygdala mediates the visual recognition of fear and surprise.

Surprise is one of the seven universal emotions and arises when we encounter sudden and unexpected sounds or movements. As the briefest of the universal emotions, its function is to focus our attention on determining what is happening and whether or not it is dangerous. Some emotion scholars do not consider surprise to be an emotion because they say it is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, claiming that all emotions must be one or the other. Many emotions experts, including Dr. Paul Ekman, disagree with this stance, noting that surprise feels like an emotion to most people; in the moment or two before we figure out what is occurring, before we switch to another emotion or no emotion, surprise itself can feel good or bad.