Dimensional emotions are represented by distinct topographical brain networks

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Affective Science
• Neuroimaging

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the importance of recognizing facial emotions for social functioning and emotion regulation.
• Understanding affective dimensions, like emotional valence and arousal, is key to perceiving and labeling emotions.
• Limited research exists on the congruence between behavioral and neural representations of affective dimensions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between behavioral and neural representations of affective dimensions (valence and arousal) in facial emotion recognition.
• To compare the representational geometry of affective dimensions in behavior and brain activity.

Main Methods:

• Developed a behavioral paradigm to categorize emotional faces based on valence, arousal, and combined dimensions.
• Acquired neural representations using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
• Compared behavioral and neural representational geometries.

Main Results:

• Affective dimensions are represented similarly in both behavioral responses and brain activity.
• Behavioral and neural representations of valence showed less similarity to those of arousal.
• Valence is primarily represented in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, frontal eye fields, precuneus, and early visual cortex.
• Arousal is represented in the cingulate gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, fusiform gyrus, and early visual cortex.

Conclusions:

• Dimensional emotions are consistently represented across behavioral and neural levels.
• Valence and arousal exhibit distinct topographical organizations within the brain.
• Findings provide insights into the neural underpinnings of emotion perception and regulation.