Task-dependent neural bases of perceiving emotionally expressive targets

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Neuroimaging

Background:

• Social cognition research has primarily focused on the 'perceiver' while neglecting the 'target' in interpersonal interactions.
• Methodological limitations have historically constrained studies on the neural basis of social perception.
• Understanding how individuals' expressivity influences others' neural processing is crucial for a complete model of social cognition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the perception of emotionally expressive versus inexpressive social targets.
• To examine how a target's emotional expressivity affects a perceiver's brain activity.
• To determine if these effects are modulated by the perceiver's attentional focus (emotions vs. eye-gaze).

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to scan 16 perceivers.
• Perceivers viewed social targets discussing emotional autobiographical events.
• Participants continuously rated the target's emotional state or eye-gaze direction.

Main Results:

• When perceivers focused on emotions, target expressivity modulated activity in brain regions associated with mental state inference (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex).
• When perceivers focused on eye-gaze, target expressivity modulated activity in regions related to sensorimotor processing and biological motion (e.g., somatosensory cortex, fusiform gyrus, motor cortex).
• These findings demonstrate that the impact of a target's expressivity on perceiver brain activity is dependent on the perceiver's task goals.

Conclusions:

• The neural processing of social information is dynamically influenced by the interaction between target expressivity and perceiver goals.
• This study provides foundational insights into the neural underpinnings of interpersonal social cognition.
• Future research should continue to explore the bidirectional nature of social interactions in neural terms.