Association of Facial Action Units with Emotions in People Living with Dementia Listening to Music

Music is a recommended intervention for people living with dementia as it can improve behaviour and levels of happiness. The automatic association of facial action units and in turn facial emotion recognition with personalized music playlists can lead to solutions that will improve the quality of living of these people and their carers and families. In this paper we investigate the association between facial action units and levels of happiness as they were noted by expert observers. The evaluation results indicated specific action units broadly mirrored the labelled level of happiness for each song from a fit for purpose designed playlist.