In this paper, we investigate brain directed connectivity (BDC) networks for emotion recognition using electroencephalogram (EEG) source signals that were estimated from high-density sensor EEG signals, for the first time. Currently, a variety of features extracted from sensor EEG signals are used for emotion recognition. However, they cannot unambiguously describe the location of emotions associated with neural activities and information propagation or the interaction between brain regions. In addition, most current studies use low-density sensor EEG signals. Moreover, source signals estimated from high-density sensor EEG signal have not been employed for emotion recognition to date. We designed a BDC network-based framework using EEG source signals to investigate emotion recognition. The global cortex factor-based multivariate autoregressive (GCF-MVAR) method was utilized to extract emotion-related BDC features. Our study revealed that the combined BDC and DE features facilitated a recognition accuracy of up to 89.58 %, which is higher than the rate obtained from BDC features and DE features alone. The sensor features derived from high-density EEG signals also exhibited higher recognition accuracy compared to low-density EEG signals. These findings suggest that BDC features derived from EEG source signals can better characterize human emotional states and are meaningful for emotion recognition.