Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Parallel Processing

Parallel Processing

The brain processes sensory information rapidly due to parallel processing, which involves sending data across multiple neural pathways at the same time. This method allows the brain to manage various sensory qualities, such as shapes, colors, movements, and locations, all concurrently. For instance, when observing a forest landscape, the brain simultaneously processes the movement of leaves, the shapes of trees, the depth between them, and the various shades of green. This enables a quick and...

Major Somatic Sensory Pathways

Major Somatic Sensory Pathways

Sensory impulses related to touch, pressure, vibration, and proprioception from various body parts, such as the limbs, trunk, neck, and posterior head, travel to the cerebral cortex through the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway. The pathway’s name derives from the two white-matter tracts that convey the impulses: the spinal cord's posterior column and the brainstem's medial lemniscus. First-order sensory neurons extend their axons into the spinal cord, forming the...

Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

Depth perception is the ability to perceive objects three-dimensionally. It relies on two types of cues: binocular and monocular. Binocular cues depend on the combination of images from both eyes and how the eyes work together. Since the eyes are in slightly different positions, each eye captures a slightly different image. This disparity between images, known as binocular disparity, helps the brain interpret depth. When the brain compares these images, it determines the distance to an object.

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt principles provide a framework for understanding how humans perceive objects as unified wholes within their context. These principles are essential in explaining the cognitive processes that make sense of complex visual stimuli by organizing them into coherent groups. One fundamental principle is proximity, which posits that objects located close to each other are perceived as a collective group. For instance, when dots are positioned near one another, the visual system interprets them...

Vision

Vision

Vision is the result of light being detected and transduced into neural signals by the retina of the eye. This information is then further analyzed and interpreted by the brain. First, light enters the front of the eye and is focused by the cornea and lens onto the retina—a thin sheet of neural tissue lining the back of the eye. Because of refraction through the convex lens of the eye, images are projected onto the retina upside-down and reversed.

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Transcranial magnetic stimulation in multiple sclerosis: Targeting symptoms through neuroplasticity.

Multiple sclerosis (Houndmills, Basingstoke, England)·2026

Same author

Prolonged Visual Entrainment Induces Long-Lasting Alpha-Band Modulations.

Psychophysiology·2026

Same author

Cognitive computations underlying ritual performance and persistence.

Trends in cognitive sciences·2026

Same author

A novel bias-free approach for robust perceptual threshold estimation.

Behavior research methods·2026

Same author

Cortico-cortical paired associative stimulation highlights the functional role of the cortical pathway from the right inferior frontal gyrus to the primary motor cortex in motor inhibition.

NeuroImage·2026

Same author

Rapid rTPJ-driven cortical interactions encode malicious intentions during implicit moral evaluation: A TMS-EEG study.

NeuroImage·2026

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 19, 2026

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Published on: August 22, 2025

Emotional and movement-related body postures modulate visual processing.

Khatereh Borhani¹, Elisabetta Làdavas¹, Martin E Maier²

¹Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy, CSRNC, Centre for Studies and Research in Cognitive Neuroscience, Cesena Campus, University of Bologna, 47521 Cesena, Italy.

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

|January 4, 2015

Summary

Human body posture perception is processed early in the brain, with the right hemisphere distinguishing emotions and movement. Later visual processing enhances attention to fearful body postures.

Keywords:

N190 body postures early posterior negativity (EPN)emotion perception visual structural encoding

More Related Videos

A Method to Quantify Visual Information Processing in Children Using Eye Tracking

A Method to Quantify Visual Information Processing in Children Using Eye Tracking

Published on: July 9, 2016

Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention

Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention

Published on: November 16, 2017

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Apr 19, 2026

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Published on: August 22, 2025

A Method to Quantify Visual Information Processing in Children Using Eye Tracking

A Method to Quantify Visual Information Processing in Children Using Eye Tracking

Published on: July 9, 2016

Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention

Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention

Published on: November 16, 2017

Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Visual Perception
Social Cognition

Background:

Human body postures provide crucial cues for understanding emotions and intentions.
The visual system processes complex information from body movements and expressions.

Purpose of the Study:

To determine the stages of visual processing where emotional and movement information from body postures is discriminated.
To investigate hemispheric differences in processing body posture information.

Main Methods:

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants viewed static and implied-motion body images with neutral, fearful, or happy expressions.
Analysis focused on early visual structural encoding (N190) and later perceptual representation stages.

Main Results:

The right hemisphere's N190 was modulated by both motion and emotional content (fearful postures showed the largest amplitude).
The left hemisphere's N190 was modulated only by motion content.
A later stage showed increased early posterior negativity for fearful stimuli in both hemispheres, indicating enhanced processing of salient stimuli.

Conclusions:

The brain processes emotion and movement information from body postures at distinct visual processing stages.
Hemispheric specialization exists for processing body posture cues, with the right hemisphere showing greater sensitivity to emotional content.
Specialized perceptual mechanisms are tuned to emotion- and action-related information conveyed by human body postures.