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Published on: November 16, 2017
Emotional modulation of body-selective visual areas
Marius V Peelen1, Anthony P Atkinson, Frederic Andersson
1Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. mariuspeelen@hotmail.com
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
|November 6, 2008
Summary
Emotionally expressive bodies activate specific visual brain regions, similar to faces. This emotional body processing involves the extrastriate body area and fusiform body area, modulated by the amygdala.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
- Social Cognition
Background:
- Emotionally expressive faces modulate visual cortex activation, particularly face-selective regions.
- Previous research has not fully explored if emotionally expressive bodies similarly influence body-selective visual areas.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether dynamic displays of emotionally expressive bodies modulate activation in body-selective visual areas.
- To determine if the emotional modulation in body-selective areas relates to body selectivity and not face selectivity.
- To examine the correlation between amygdala responses and the modulation of body-selective areas.
Main Methods:
- fMRI study using dynamic visual stimuli of bodies with emotional vs. neutral expressions.
- Analysis of activation in body-selective regions: extrastriate body area (EBA) and fusiform body area (FBA).
- Multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to assess voxel-wise relationships between emotional modulation and category selectivity.
- Correlation analysis between amygdala responses and visual area modulation.
Main Results:
- Dynamic emotional body expressions significantly activated the extrastriate body area and fusiform body area.
- The degree of emotional modulation in these areas correlated with body selectivity, not face selectivity.
- Amygdala responses to emotional bodies positively correlated with the modulation observed in body-selective visual areas.
Conclusions:
- Emotional cues from body movements selectively influence category-specific neuronal populations in visual cortex.
- These findings suggest topographically selective processing of emotional bodies within visual areas.
- Modulatory projections from the amygdala likely play a role in processing emotional body language.
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