RESUMEN
In natural viewing conditions, different stimulus categories such as people, objects, and natural scenes carry relevant affective information that is usually processed simultaneously. But these different signals may not always have the same affective meaning. Using body-scene compound stimuli, we investigated how the brain processes fearful signals conveyed by either a body in the foreground or scenes in the background and the interaction between foreground body and background scene. The results showed that left and right extrastriate body areas (EBA) responded more to fearful than to neutral bodies. More interestingly, a threatening background scene compared to a neutral one showed increased activity in bilateral EBA and right-posterior parahippocampal place area (PPA) and decreased activity in right retrosplenial cortex (RSC) and left-anterior PPA. The emotional scene effect in EBA was only present when the foreground body was neutral and not when the body posture expressed fear (significant emotion-by-category interaction effect), consistent with behavioral ratings. The results provide evidence for emotional influence of the background scene on the processing of body expressions.
Asunto(s)
Afecto , Encefalopatías Metabólicas , Encéfalo/fisiología , Miedo , Reconocimiento Visual de Modelos/fisiología , Percepción/fisiología , Adolescente , Adulto , Análisis de Varianza , Encéfalo/irrigación sanguínea , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Estimulación Luminosa , Tiempo de Reacción/fisiología , Adulto JovenRESUMEN
Facial expression perception can be influenced by the natural visual context in which the face is perceived. We performed an fMRI experiment presenting participants with fearful or neutral faces against threatening or neutral background scenes. Triangles and scrambled scenes served as control stimuli. The results showed that the valence of the background influences face selective activity in the right anterior parahippocampal place area (PPA) and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) with higher activation for neutral backgrounds compared to threatening backgrounds (controlled for isolated background effects) and that this effect correlated with trait empathy in the sgACC. In addition, the left fusiform gyrus (FG) responds to the affective congruence between face and background scene. The results show that valence of the background modulates face processing and support the hypothesis that empathic processing in sgACC is inhibited when affective information is present in the background. In addition, the findings reveal a pattern of complex scene perception showing a gradient of functional specialization along the posterior-anterior axis: from sensitivity to the affective content of scenes (extrastriate body area: EBA and posterior PPA), over scene emotion-face emotion interaction (left FG) via category-scene interaction (anterior PPA) to scene-category-personality interaction (sgACC).
Asunto(s)
Encéfalo/fisiología , Cara , Expresión Facial , Miedo , Reconocimiento Visual de Modelos/fisiología , Adulto , Encéfalo/irrigación sanguínea , Empatía , Análisis Factorial , Femenino , Humanos , Procesamiento de Imagen Asistido por Computador , Imagen por Resonancia Magnética , Masculino , Oxígeno/sangre , Estimulación Luminosa , Encuestas y Cuestionarios , Adulto JovenRESUMEN
It is part of basic emotions like fear or anger that they prepare the brain to act adaptively. Hence scenes representing emotional events are normally associated with characteristic adaptive behavior. Normally, face and body representation areas in the brain are modulated by these emotions when presented in the face or body. Here, we provide neuroimaging evidence (using functional magnetic resonance imaging) that the extrastriate body area (EBA) is highly responsive when subjects observe isolated faces presented in emotional scenes. This response of EBA to threatening scenes in which no body is present gives rise to speculation about its function. We discuss the possibility that the brain reacts proactively to the emotional meaning of the scene.
Asunto(s)
Encéfalo/anatomía & histología , Encéfalo/fisiología , Miedo/fisiología , Estimulación Luminosa , Visión Ocular/fisiología , Adulto , Mapeo Encefálico , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMEN
Recent studies of monkeys and humans have identified several brain regions that respond to bodies. Researchers have so far mainly addressed the same questions about bodies and bodily expressions that are already familiar from three decades of face and facial expression studies. Our present goal is to review behavioral, electrophysiological and neurofunctional studies on whole body and bodily expression perception against the background of what is known about face perception. We review all currently available evidence in more detail than done so far, but we also argue for a more theoretically motivated comparison of faces and bodies that reflects some broader concerns than only modularity or category specificity of faces or bodies.