Decoding the difference between explicit and implicit body expression representation in high level visual, prefrontal and inferior parietal cortex

An Event-Related Potential (ERP) Examination of the Neural Responses to Emotional and Movement-Related Images

Previous research has suggested that the perception of emotional images may also activate brain regions related to the preparation of motoric plans. However, little research has investigated whether these emotion-movement interactions occur at early or later stages of visual perception. In the current research, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to examine the time course of the independent - and combined - effects of perceiving emotions and implied movement. Twenty-five participants viewed images from four categories: 1) emotional with implied movement, 2) emotional with no implied movement, 3) neutral with implied movement, and 4) neutral with no implied movement. Both emotional stimuli and movement-related stimuli led to larger N200 (200-300 ms) waveforms. Furthermore, at frontal sites, there was a marginal interaction between emotion and implied movement, such that negative stimuli showed greater N200 amplitudes vs. neutral stimuli, but only for images with implied movement. At posterior sites, a similar effect was observed for images without implied movement. The late positive potential (LPP; 500-1000 ms) was significant for emotion (at frontal sites) and movement (at frontal, central, and posterior sites), as well as for their interaction (at parietal sites), with larger LPPs for negative vs. neutral images with movement only. Together, these results suggest that the perception of emotion and movement interact at later stages of visual perception.

Structural Connectivity and Emotion Recognition Impairment in Children and Adolescents with Chromosome 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome

Children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) exhibit impaired ability to process and understand emotions in others. We measured structural connectivity in children and adolescents with 22q11.2DS (n = 28) and healthy controls (n = 29). Compared to controls, those with 22q11.2DS had poorer social skills and more difficulty recognizing facial emotions. Children with 22q11.2DS also had higher fractional anisotropic diffusion in right amygdala to fusiform gyrus white matter pathways. Right amygdala to fusiform gyrus fractional anisotropy values partially mediated the relationship between 22q11.2DS and social skills, as well as the relationship between 22q11.2DS and emotion recognition accuracy. These findings provide insight into the neural origins of social skills deficits seen in 22q11.2DS and may serve as a biomarker for risk of future psychiatric problems.

The conscious processing of emotion in depression disorder: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies

Background

Depression is generally accompanied by a disturbed conscious processing of emotion, which manifests as a negative bias to facial/voice emotion information and a decreased accuracy in emotion recognition tasks. Several studies have proved that abnormal brain activation was responsible for the deficit function of conscious emotion recognition in depression. However, the altered brain activation related to the conscious processing of emotion in depression was incongruent among studies. Therefore, we conducted an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) analysis to better understand the underlying neurophysiological mechanism of conscious processing of emotion in depression.

Method

Electronic databases were searched using the search terms "depression," "emotion recognition," and "neuroimaging" from inceptions to April 10th, 2023. We retrieved trials which explored the neuro-responses of depressive patients to explicit emotion recognition tasks. Two investigators independently performed literature selection, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment. The spatial consistency of brain activation in conscious facial expressions recognition was calculated using ALE. The robustness of the results was examined by Jackknife sensitivity analysis.

Results

We retrieved 11,365 articles in total, 28 of which were included. In the overall analysis, we found increased activity in the middle temporal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, and cuneus, and decreased activity in the superior temporal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, insula, and superior frontal gyrus. In response to positive stimuli, depressive patients showed hyperactivity in the medial frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and insula (uncorrected p < 0.001). When receiving negative stimuli, a higher activation was found in the precentral gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, precuneus, and superior temporal gyrus (uncorrected p < 0.001).

Conclusion

Among depressive patients, a broad spectrum of brain areas was involved in a deficit of conscious emotion processing. The activation of brain regions was different in response to positive or negative stimuli. Due to potential clinical heterogeneity, the findings should be treated with caution.

Systematic review registration

https://inplasy.com/inplasy-2022-11-0057/, identifier: 2022110057.

Voxelwise encoding models of body stimuli reveal a representational gradient from low-level visual features to postural features in occipitotemporal cortex

Research on body representation in the brain has focused on category-specific representation, using fMRI to investigate the response pattern to body stimuli in occipitotemporal cortex without so far addressing the issue of the specific computations involved in body selective regions, only defined by higher order category selectivity. This study used ultra-high field fMRI and banded ridge regression to investigate the coding of body images, by comparing the performance of three encoding models in predicting brain activity in occipitotemporal cortex and specifically the extrastriate body area (EBA). Our results suggest that bodies are encoded in occipitotemporal cortex and in the EBA according to a combination of low-level visual features and postural features.