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Neural Representations of Emotions in Visual, Auditory, and Modality-Independent Regions Reflect Idiosyncratic
Chuanji Gao1, Sewon Oh2, Xuan Yang2
1School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China.
Human Brain Mapping
|October 12, 2024
Summary
Conceptual knowledge shapes how we perceive emotions from faces and voices. This study reveals that brain regions for both visual and auditory processing, as well as modality-independent areas, are influenced by our understanding of emotions.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Psychology
Background:
- Conceptual knowledge is increasingly recognized as a factor in emotion perception.
- Previous research indicated conceptual influences on visual emotion processing, but auditory and cross-modal effects remained unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the neural mechanisms by which conceptual knowledge influences emotion perception across visual and auditory modalities.
- To determine if conceptual influences operate at modality-specific and/or modality-independent brain regions.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study using both facial and vocal emotional stimuli.
- Univariate and representational similarity analyses (RSA) to examine brain representations.
- Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to explore network interactions.
Main Results:
- Conceptual knowledge predicted neural representations of emotions in visual (occipital cortex) and auditory (superior temporal gyrus) regions.
- Conceptual knowledge also influenced supra-modal representations in the superior temporal sulcus.
- fMRI data revealed a complex network with both bottom-up and top-down processing.
Conclusions:
- Neural representations of emotions in sensory-perceptual areas are shaped by conceptual understanding.
- Conceptual knowledge influences emotion processing in modality-independent brain regions.
- Emotion perception involves an intricate interplay between modality-specific and modality-independent neural networks.
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