Neuroanatomical correlates of categorizing emotional valence

Categorization is fundamental to cognition, and evidence suggests that categorizing emotional stimuli holds a privileged position in human information processing. According to theories on embodied emotion, the subjective emotional feeling elicited by a stimulus plays a causal role in its categorization. Using functional MRI, we tested the hypothesis that categorizing emotional stimuli in terms of valence would activate structures involved in valence-specific experience of emotion. On each trial, two pictures from the International Affective Picture System were presented successively. Upon viewing the second picture, participants categorized it as belonging to the same valence category as or a different valence category from the first picture. Categorization activated an exclusively left-lateralized set of regions implicated in taxonomic categorization (i.e. judging whether two items are of the same kind) including the middle temporal gyrus and precuneus, as well as the posterior cingulate cortex. Critically, for negative pictures categorization activated structures that underlie the experience of negative emotions (anterior insula, left orbitofrontal cortex), whereas for positive pictures categorization activated structures that underlie the experience of positive emotions (dorsomedial and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Consistent with predictions derived from theories on embodied emotion, these results suggest that experience of emotion contributes to categorizing emotional valence.