Emotion through locomotion: gender impact

Single point motion kinematics convey emotional signals in children and adults

This study investigates whether humans recognize different emotions conveyed only by the kinematics of a single moving geometrical shape and how this competence unfolds during development, from childhood to adulthood. To this aim, animations in which a shape moved according to happy, fearful, or neutral cartoons were shown, in a forced-choice paradigm, to 7- and 10-year-old children and adults. Accuracy and response times were recorded, and the movement of the mouse while the participants selected a response was tracked. Results showed that 10-year-old children and adults recognize happiness and fear when conveyed solely by different kinematics, with an advantage for fearful stimuli. Fearful stimuli were also accurately identified at 7-year-olds, together with neutral stimuli, while, at this age, the accuracy for happiness was not significantly different than chance. Overall, results demonstrates that emotions can be identified by a single point motion alone during both childhood and adulthood. Moreover, motion contributes in various measures to the comprehension of emotions, with fear recognized earlier in development and more readily even later on, when all emotions are accurately labeled.

Social emotional processes during the third wave of COVID-19: Results from a close replication study in a Turkish sample

Until recently, for almost 3 years, we used face masks to protect against COVID-19. Face masks disrupted our perception of socially relevant information, and impacted our social judgements as a result of the new social norms around wearing masks imposed by the pandemic. To shed light on such pandemic-induced changes in social emotional processes, Calbi et al. analysed data from an Italian sample collected in Spring 2020. They assessed valence, social distance and physical distance ratings for neutral, happy and angry male and female faces covered with a scarf or a mask. A year later, we used the same stimuli to investigate the same measures in a Turkish sample. We found that females attributed more negative valence ratings than males to angry faces, and that angry and neutral faces of females were rated more negatively than those of males. Scarf stimuli were evaluated more negatively in terms of valence. Participants attributed greater distance to more negative faces (angry > neutral > happy) and to scarf than the mask stimuli. Also, females attributed greater social and physical distance than males. These results may be explained by gender-stereotypic socialisation processes, and changes in people's perception of health behaviours during the pandemic.

Do subtle cultural differences sculpt face pareidolia?

Face tuning to non-face images such as shadows or grilled toasts is termed face pareidolia. Face-pareidolia images represent a valuable tool for investigation of social cognition in mental disorders. Here we examined (i) whether, and, if so, how face pareidolia is affected by subtle cultural differences; and (ii) whether this impact is modulated by gender. With this purpose in mind, females and males from Northern Italy were administered a set of Face-n-Thing images, photographs of objects such as houses or waves to a varying degree resembling a face. Participants were presented with pareidolia images with canonical upright orientation and display inversion that heavily affects face pareidolia. In a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm, beholders had to indicate whether each image resembled a face. The outcome was compared with the findings obtained in the Southwest of Germany. With upright orientation, neither cultural background nor gender affected face pareidolia. As expected, display inversion generally mired face pareidolia. Yet, while display inversion led to a drastic reduction of face impression in German males as compared to females, in Italians, no gender differences were found. In a nutshell, subtle cultural differences do not sculpt face pareidolia, but instead affect face impression in a gender-specific way under unusual viewing conditions. Clarification of the origins of these effects requires tailored brain imaging work. Implications for transcultural psychiatry, in particular, for schizophrenia research, are highlighted and discussed.

Perception of biological motion. No sensitivity differences between patients with Parkinson's disease and healthy observers

The use of biological motion (BM) stimuli (point-light walkers PLW) may be a novel alternative to improve the clinical impact of Action Observation treatments in Parkinson's Disease, by directing the patient's attentional focus on gait kinematics. However, the recognition of biological motion in Parkinson's patients has thus far been controversial. To evaluate the clinical feasibility of using BM stimuli in Action Observation treatments, we aimed at investigating whether Parkinson's patients in the ON-state condition can identify and use gender-specific cues conveyed by the body structure and by the kinematics of gait of a PLW. 30 Parkinson's patients and 30 healthy elderly observers were tested in a gender identification task with PLW. Parkinson's patients were able to correctly identify the gender of PLW; no differences were found between the two groups of observers. While for both groups, the gender identification task was easier when it required a judgment on a healthy PLW. Lastly, we found that females were more sensitive than males in our identification task. Our study shows that Parkinson's patients in the ON-state condition are able to extract subtle structural and kinematic characteristics from biological motion stimuli, which is favorable to the use of BM in Action Observation treatments.

Ties between reading faces, bodies, eyes, and autistic traits

While reading covered with masks faces during the COVID-19 pandemic, for efficient social interaction, we need to combine information from different sources such as the eyes (without faces hidden by masks) and bodies. This may be challenging for individuals with neuropsychiatric conditions, in particular, autism spectrum disorders. Here we examined whether reading of dynamic faces, bodies, and eyes are tied in a gender-specific way, and how these capabilities are related to autistic traits expression. Females and males accomplished a task with point-light faces along with a task with point-light body locomotion portraying different emotional expressions. They had to infer emotional content of displays. In addition, participants were administered the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, modified and Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire. The findings show that only in females, inferring emotions from dynamic bodies and faces are firmly linked, whereas in males, reading in the eyes is knotted with face reading. Strikingly, in neurotypical males only, accuracy of face, body, and eyes reading was negatively tied with autistic traits. The outcome points to gender-specific modes in social cognition: females rely upon merely dynamic cues while reading faces and bodies, whereas males most likely trust configural information. The findings are of value for examination of face and body language reading in neuropsychiatric conditions, in particular, autism, most of which are gender/sex-specific. This work suggests that if male individuals with autistic traits experience difficulties in reading covered with masks faces, these deficits may be unlikely compensated by reading (even dynamic) bodies and faces. By contrast, in females, reading covered faces as well as reading language of dynamic bodies and faces are not compulsorily connected to autistic traits preventing them from paying high costs for maladaptive social interaction.

Reading language of the eyes

The need for assessment of social skills in clinical and neurotypical populations has led to the widespread, and still increasing use of the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test' (RMET) developed more than two decades ago by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues for evaluation of social cognition in autism. By analyzing most recent clinical and brain imaging data, we illuminate a set of factors decisive for using the RMET. Converging evidence indicates: (i) In neurotypical individuals, RMET scores are tightly correlated with other social skills (empathy, emotional intelligence, and body language reading); (ii) The RMET assesses recognition of facial affect, but also heavily relies on receptive language skills, semantic knowledge, and memory; (iii) RMET performance is underwritten by the large-scale ensembles of neural networks well-outside the social brain; (iv) The RMET is limited in its capacity to differentiate between neuropsychiatric conditions as well as between stages and severity of a single disorder, though it reliably distinguishes individuals with altered social cognition or elevated pathological traits from neurotypical persons; (v) Merely gender (as a social construct) rather than neurobiological sex influences performance on the RMET; (vi) RMET scores do not substantially decline in healthy aging, and they are higher with higher education level, cognitive abilities, literacy, and mental well-being; (vii) Accuracy on the RMET, and engagement of the social brain, are greater when emotions are expressed and recognized by individuals with similar cultural/ethnic background. Further research is required to better inform usage of the RMET as a tool for swift and reliable examination of social cognition. In light of comparable visual input from the RMET images and faces covered by masks due to COVID-19 regulations, the analysis is of value for keeping efficient social interaction during the current pandemic, in particular, in professional settings related to social communication.

Neural correlates of sex differences in communicative gestures and speech comprehension: A preliminary study

The goal of this study was to investigate whether the semantic processing of the audiovisual combination of communicative gestures with speech differs between men and women. We recorded event-related brain potentials in women and men during the presentation of communicative gestures that were either congruent or incongruent with the speech.Our results showed that incongruent gestures elicited an N400 effect over frontal sites compared to congruent ones in both groups. Moreover, the females showed an earlier N2 response to incongruent stimuli than congruent ones, while larger sustained negativity and late positivity in response to incongruent stimuli was observed only in males. These results suggest that women rapidly recognize and process audiovisual combinations of communicative gestures and speech (as early as 300 ms) whereas men analyze them at the later stages of the process.

Reading Covered Faces

Covering faces with masks, due to mandatory pandemic safety regulations, we can no longer rely on the habitual daily-life information. This may be thought-provoking for healthy people, but particularly challenging for individuals with neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions. Au fait research on reading covered faces reveals that: 1) wearing masks hampers facial affect recognition, though it leaves reliable inferring basic emotional expressions; 2) by buffering facial affect, masks lead to narrowing of emotional spectrum and dampen veridical evaluation of counterparts; 3) masks may affect perceived face attractiveness; 4) covered (either by masks or other veils) faces have a certain signal function introducing perceptual biases and prejudices; 5) reading covered faces is gender- and age-specific, being more challenging for males and more variable even in healthy aging; 6) the hampering effects of masks on social cognition occur over the globe; and 7) reading covered faces is likely to be supported by the large-scale assemblies of the neural circuits far beyond the social brain. Challenges and limitations of ongoing research and parallels to the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test are assessed. Clarification of how masks affect face reading in the real world, where we deal with dynamic faces and have entrée to additional valuable social signals such as body language, as well as the specificity of neural networks underlying reading covered faces calls for further tailored research.

Angry facial expressions bias towards aversive actions

Social interaction requires fast and efficient processing of another person's intentions. In face-to-face interactions, aversive or appetitive actions typically co-occur with emotional expressions, allowing an observer to anticipate action intentions. In the present study, we investigated the influence of facial emotions on the processing of action intentions. Thirty-two participants were presented with video clips showing virtual agents displaying a facial emotion (angry vs. happy) while performing an action (punch vs. fist-bump) directed towards the observer. During each trial, video clips stopped at varying durations of the unfolding action, and participants had to recognize the presented action. Naturally, participants' recognition accuracy improved with increasing duration of the unfolding actions. Interestingly, while facial emotions did not influence accuracy, there was a significant influence on participants' action judgements. Participants were more likely to judge a presented action as a punch when agents showed an angry compared to a happy facial emotion. This effect was more pronounced in short video clips, showing only the beginning of an unfolding action, than in long video clips, showing near-complete actions. These results suggest that facial emotions influence anticipatory processing of action intentions allowing for fast and adaptive responses in social interactions.

Brain circuits signaling the absence of emotion in body language

Adaptive social behavior and mental well-being depend on not only recognizing emotional expressions but also, inferring the absence of emotion. While the neurobiology underwriting the perception of emotions is well studied, the mechanisms for detecting a lack of emotional content in social signals remain largely unknown. Here, using cutting-edge analyses of effective brain connectivity, we uncover the brain networks differentiating neutral and emotional body language. The data indicate greater activation of the right amygdala and midline cerebellar vermis to nonemotional as opposed to emotional body language. Most important, the effective connectivity between the amygdala and insula predicts people's ability to recognize the absence of emotion. These conclusions extend substantially current concepts of emotion perception by suggesting engagement of limbic effective connectivity in recognizing the lack of emotion in body language reading. Furthermore, the outcome may advance the understanding of overly emotional interpretation of social signals in depression or schizophrenia by providing the missing link between body language reading and limbic pathways. The study thus opens an avenue for multidisciplinary research on social cognition and the underlying cerebrocerebellar networks, ranging from animal models to patients with neuropsychiatric conditions.

Untangling the Ties Between Social Cognition and Body Motion: Gender Impact

We proved the viability of the general hypothesis that biological motion (BM) processing serves as a hallmark of social cognition. We assumed that BM processing and inferring emotions through BM (body language reading) are firmly linked and examined whether this tie is gender-specific. Healthy females and males completed two tasks with the same set of point-light BM displays portraying angry and neutral locomotion of female and male actors. For one task, perceivers had to indicate actor gender, while for the other, they had to infer the emotional content of locomotion. Thus, with identical visual input, we directed task demands either to BM processing or inferring of emotion. This design allows straight comparison between sensitivity to BM and recognition of emotions conveyed by the same BM. In addition, perceivers were administered a set of photographs from the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), with which they identified either emotional state or actor gender. Although there were no gender differences in performance on BM tasks, a tight link occurred between recognition accuracy of emotions and gender through BM in males. In females only, body language reading (both accuracy and response time) was associated with performance on the RMET. The outcome underscores gender-specific modes in visual social cognition and triggers investigation of body language reading in a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders.

The Influence of Empathy Trait and Gender on Empathic Responses. A Study With Dynamic Emotional Stimulus and Eye Movement Recordings

Previous studies have suggested that empathic process involve several components such as cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and prosocial concern. It has also been reported that gender and empathy trait can influence empathic responses such as emotional recognition, which requires an appropriate scanning of faces. However, the degree to which these factors influence the empathic responses, which include emotion recognition, affective empathy, and cognitive empathy, has not yet been specified. Aim: The aim of the present study was to identify the differences between individuals with high and low level of empathy trait, as well as differences between men and women, in an explicit task in order to evaluate the empathic responses. Methods: With this goal in mind, we recorded eye movements during the presentation of dynamic emotional stimuli (joy, anger, fear, and neutral videos). After watching each video, participants had to rate the valence and arousal dimensions of emotional content and explicit empathy responses were assessed. Thirty participants (15 women) were included in a High Empathy group (HE; mean age = 21.0) and 30 participants (16 women) in the Low Empathy group (LE; mean age = 21.2), according to their scores in the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) scale. Results: As expected, the HE group showed higher scores than the LE group in the explicit empathy responses. These differences, based on global scores, were mainly explained by affective empathy and cognitive empathy responses but not by emotional recognition one. No differences were observed by gender in these measures. Regarding eye movements in the dynamic emotional stimuli, HE group had longer fixation duration on the eyes area than LE group. In addition, women spent more time on the eyes area in comparison to men. Discussion: Our findings suggest that both men and women with high empathy trait are more accurate to empathizing but not on the basis of the emotional recognition response. The fact that women spent more time on the eyes area did not seem to affect the empathic responses to the dynamic emotional stimulus. Overall, empathic responses of both men and women are modulated by their empathic trait. In addition, empathic trait and gender seem to impact strategies to deal with emotional facial information.

Structural and effective brain connectivity underlying biological motion detection

The perception of actions underwrites a wide range of socio-cognitive functions. Previous neuroimaging and lesion studies identified several components of the brain network for visual biological motion (BM) processing, but interactions among these components and their relationship to behavior remain little understood. Here, using a recently developed integrative analysis of structural and effective connectivity derived from high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assess the cerebro-cerebellar network for processing of camouflaged point-light BM. Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) informed by probabilistic tractography indicates that the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) serves as an integrator within the temporal module. However, the STS does not appear to be a "gatekeeper" in the functional integration of the occipito-temporal and frontal regions: The fusiform gyrus (FFG) and middle temporal cortex (MTC) are also connected to the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and insula, indicating multiple parallel pathways. BM-specific loops of effective connectivity are seen between the left lateral cerebellar lobule Crus I and right STS, as well as between the left Crus I and right insula. The prevalence of a structural pathway between the FFG and STS is associated with better BM detection. Moreover, a canonical variate analysis shows that the visual sensitivity to BM is best predicted by BM-specific effective connectivity from the FFG to STS and from the IFG, insula, and STS to the early visual cortex. Overall, the study characterizes the architecture of the cerebro-cerebellar network for BM processing and offers prospects for assessing the social brain.

Anterior Temporal Lobectomy Impairs Neural Classification of Body Emotions in Right Superior Temporal Sulcus and Reduces Emotional Enhancement in Distributed Brain Areas without Affecting Behavioral Classification

Humans with amygdalar lesions show proportional reductions of the emotional response to facial expressions in the fusiform face area as well as deficits in emotion recognition from facial expressions. While processing of bodily expressions shares many similarities with facial expressions, there is no substantial evidence that lesions of the amygdala result in similar behavioral and neural sequelae. We combined behavioral assessment with functional neuroimaging in a group of male and female humans with unilateral anterior temporal lobe (ATL) resections, including the amygdala (right: n = 10; left: n = 10) and 12 matched controls. The objective was to assess whether the amygdala is crucial for the recognition of body expressions and for modulatory effects on distant areas during perception of body expressions. The behavioral results revealed normal performance in both patient groups on emotion categorization of body expressions. The neuroimaging results showed that ATL patients displayed no enhanced activations in right fusiform body area and left extrastriate body area and that left ATL patients additionally displayed no enhanced activations in right posterior superior temporal sulcus and right extrastriate body area, respectively. Multivoxel pattern analysis revealed altered categorization capacity between emotional and neutral stimuli in right posterior superior temporal sulcus in right ATL patients. In addition, we also found emotional enhancement in frontal, parietal, occipital, and cingulate regions in controls. Together, our data show that the amygdala and ATLs are not necessary for recognition of dynamic body expressions, but suggest that amygdala lesions affect body emotion processing in distant brain areas.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT For humans, information from emotional expressions of others is crucial to support social interactions. The majority of emotion studies has focused on facial expressions; however, in daily life, we also use information from body postures and body movement. Visual processing of body expressions relies on a brain network, including body-specific visual areas and visuomotor areas. Even though the importance of the amygdala and its modulatory effects on distant brain regions have been documented, it remains unclear whether the amygdala plays a crucial role in emotional body processing. By combining behavioral and neuroimaging data in patients with amygdalar lesions, we provide further evidence for its modulatory effect on distant areas during the perception of body expressions.

Gender Differences in Processing Fearful and Angry Body Expressions

Previous studies have demonstrated differential perception of body expressions between males and females. However, only two recent studies (Kret et al., 2011; Krüger et al., 2013) explored the interaction effect between observer gender and subject gender, and it remains unclear whether this interaction between the two gender factors is gender-congruent (i.e., better recognition of emotions expressed by subjects of the same gender) or gender-incongruent (i.e., better recognition of emotions expressed by subjects of the opposite gender). Here, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the recognition of fearful and angry body expressions posed by males and females. Male and female observers also completed an affective rating task (including valence, intensity, and arousal ratings). Behavioral results showed that male observers reported higher arousal rating scores for angry body expressions posed by females than males. ERP data showed that when recognizing angry body expressions, female observers had larger P1 for male than female bodies, while male observers had larger P3 for female than male bodies. These results indicate gender-incongruent effects in early and later stages of body expression processing, which fits well with the evolutionary theory that females mainly play a role in care of offspring while males mainly play a role in family guarding and protection. Furthermore, it is found that in both angry and fearful conditions male observers exhibited a larger N170 for male than female bodies, and female observers showed a larger N170 for female than male bodies. This gender-incongruent effect in the structural encoding stage of processing may be due to the familiarity of the body configural features of the same gender. The current results provide insights into the significant role of gender in body expression processing, helping us understand the issue of gender vulnerability associated with psychiatric disorders characterized by deficits of body language reading.

Faces on Her and His Mind: Female and Likable

Faces are a valuable source of non-verbal information for daily life social interaction. Mounting evidence points to gender specificity in face perception. Here we search for the factors that can potentially trigger gender differences in tuning to faces. By using a set of Face-n-Food images slightly bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style, we examine: (i) whether face resemblance is linked to gender specific face impression, and, if so, whether this association is perceiver gender specific; and (ii) whether images most resembling a face are also most likable for female and male perceivers. First, in a spontaneous recognition task, participants were shown a set of Face-n-Food images in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. Then in a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task, participants judged whether each face appeared for them (i) either female or male (Exp. 1); or (ii) either likable or unlikable (Exp. 2). Remarkably, face resemblance is closely connected to gender specific impressions: images more resembling a face elicit also more female-face responses. This link is not perceiver gender specific as it occurs for both females and males. Moreover, face resemblance is positively linked to face likability, but this holds true only for female perceivers. The findings shed light on gender specificity in tuning to faces, and help to clarify abnormalities of the social brain in neurodevelopmental, psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders.

Reading Emotions from Body Movement: A Generalized Impairment in Schizophrenia

Body language reading is a social cognitive process with importance for successful maneuvering of social situations. In this study, we investigated body language reading as assessed with human point-light displays in participants with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (n = 84) compared to healthy control participants (n = 84), aiming to answer three questions: (1) whether persons with a diagnosis of schizophrenia have poorer body language reading abilities than healthy persons; (2) whether some emotions are easier to read from body language than others, and if this is the same for individuals with schizophrenia and healthy individuals, and (3) whether there are sex differences in body language reading in participants with schizophrenia and healthy participants. A fourth research aim concerned associations of body language reading with symptoms and functioning in participants with schizophrenia. Scores on the body language reading measure was first standardized using a separate sample of healthy control participants (n = 101). Further results showed that persons with schizophrenia had impaired body language reading ability compared to healthy persons. A significant effect of emotion indicated that some emotions (happiness, neutral) were easier to recognize and this was so for both individuals with schizophrenia and healthy individuals. There were no sex differences for either diagnostic group. Body language reading ability was not associated with symptoms or functioning. In conclusion; schizophrenia was characterized by a global impairment in body language reading that was present for all emotions and across sex.

Individual differences in reading social intentions from motor deviants

As social animals, it is crucial to understand others’ intention. But is it possible to detect social intention in two actions that have the exact same motor goal? In the present study, we presented participants with video clips of an individual reaching for and grasping an object to either use it (personal trial) or to give his partner the opportunity to use it (social trial). In Experiment 1, the ability of naïve participants to classify correctly social trials through simple observation of short video clips was tested. In addition, detection levels were analyzed as a function of individual scores in psychological questionnaires of motor imagery, visual imagery, and social cognition. Results revealed that the between-participant heterogeneity in the ability to distinguish social from personal actions was predicted by the social skill abilities. A second experiment was then conducted to assess what predictive mechanism could contribute to the detection of social intention. Video clips were sliced and normalized to control for either the reaction times (RTs) or/and the movement times (MTs) of the grasping action. Tested in a second group of participants, results showed that the detection of social intention relies on the variation of both RT and MT that are implicitly perceived in the grasping action. The ability to use implicitly these motor deviants for action-outcome understanding would be the key to intuitive social interaction.

Face-n-Food: Gender Differences in Tuning to Faces

Faces represent valuable signals for social cognition and non-verbal communication. A wealth of research indicates that women tend to excel in recognition of facial expressions. However, it remains unclear whether females are better tuned to faces. We presented healthy adult females and males with a set of newly created food-plate images resembling faces (slightly bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style). In a spontaneous recognition task, participants were shown a set of images in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. Females not only more readily recognized the images as a face (they reported resembling a face on images, on which males still did not), but gave on overall more face responses. The findings are discussed in the light of gender differences in deficient face perception. As most neuropsychiatric, neurodevelopmental and psychosomatic disorders characterized by social brain abnormalities are sex specific, the task may serve as a valuable tool for uncovering impairments in visual face processing.

Emotional expressions beyond facial muscle actions. A call for studying autonomic signals and their impact on social perception

Humans are well adapted to quickly recognize and adequately respond to another’s emotions. Different theories propose that mimicry of emotional expressions (facial or otherwise) mechanistically underlies, or at least facilitates, these swift adaptive reactions. When people unconsciously mimic their interaction partner’s expressions of emotion, they come to feel reflections of those companions’ emotions, which in turn influence the observer’s own emotional and empathic behavior. The majority of research has focused on facial actions as expressions of emotion. However, the fact that emotions are not just expressed by facial muscles alone is often still ignored in emotion perception research. In this article, I therefore argue for a broader exploration of emotion signals from sources beyond the face muscles that are more automatic and difficult to control. Specifically, I will focus on the perception of implicit sources such as gaze and tears and autonomic responses such as pupil-dilation, eyeblinks and blushing that are subtle yet visible to observers and because they can hardly be controlled or regulated by the sender, provide important “veridical” information. Recently, more research is emerging about the mimicry of these subtle affective signals including pupil-mimicry. I will here review this literature and suggest avenues for future research that will eventually lead to a better comprehension of how these signals help in making social judgments and understand each other’s emotions.

Gender stereotype susceptibility

Gender affects performance on a variety of cognitive tasks, and this impact may stem from socio-cultural factors such as gender stereotyping. Here we systematically manipulated gender stereotype messages on a social cognition task on which no initial gender gap has been documented. The outcome reveals: (i) Stereotyping affects both females and males, with a more pronounced impact on females. Yet an explicit negative message for males elicits a striking paradoxical deterioration in performance of females. (ii) Irrespective of gender and directness of message, valence of stereotype message affects performance: negative messages have stronger influence than positive ones. (iii) Directness of stereotype message differentially impacts performance of females and males: females tend to be stronger affected by implicit than explicit negative messages, whereas in males this relationship is opposite. The data are discussed in the light of neural networks underlying gender stereotyping. The findings provide novel insights into the sources of gender related fluctuations in cognition and behavior.

What can fish brains tell us about visual perception?

Fish are a complex taxonomic group, whose diversity and distance from other vertebrates well suits the comparative investigation of brain and behavior: in fish species we observe substantial differences with respect to the telencephalic organization of other vertebrates and an astonishing variety in the development and complexity of pallial structures. We will concentrate on the contribution of research on fish behavioral biology for the understanding of the evolution of the visual system. We shall review evidence concerning perceptual effects that reflect fundamental principles of the visual system functioning, highlighting the similarities and differences between distant fish groups and with other vertebrates. We will focus on perceptual effects reflecting some of the main tasks that the visual system must attain. In particular, we will deal with subjective contours and optical illusions, invariance effects, second order motion and biological motion and, finally, perceptual binding of object properties in a unified higher level representation.

Empathy: gender effects in brain and behavior

Evidence suggests that there are differences in the capacity for empathy between males and females. However, how deep do these differences go? Stereotypically, females are portrayed as more nurturing and empathetic, while males are portrayed as less emotional and more cognitive. Some authors suggest that observed gender differences might be largely due to cultural expectations about gender roles. However, empathy has both evolutionary and developmental precursors, and can be studied using implicit measures, aspects that can help elucidate the respective roles of culture and biology. This article reviews evidence from ethology, social psychology, economics, and neuroscience to show that there are fundamental differences in implicit measures of empathy, with parallels in development and evolution. Studies in nonhuman animals and younger human populations (infants/children) offer converging evidence that sex differences in empathy have phylogenetic and ontogenetic roots in biology and are not merely cultural byproducts driven by socialization. We review how these differences may have arisen in response to males' and females' different roles throughout evolution. Examinations of the neurobiological underpinnings of empathy reveal important quantitative gender differences in the basic networks involved in affective and cognitive forms of empathy, as well as a qualitative divergence between the sexes in how emotional information is integrated to support decision making processes. Finally, the study of gender differences in empathy can be improved by designing studies with greater statistical power and considering variables implicit in gender (e.g., sexual preference, prenatal hormone exposure). These improvements may also help uncover the nature of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders in which one sex is more vulnerable to compromised social competence associated with impaired empathy.

Sex Differences in the Neuromagnetic Cortical Response to Biological Motion

Body motion is a rich source of information for social interaction, and visual biological motion processing may be considered as a hallmark of social cognition. It is unclear, however, whether the social brain is sex specific. Here we assess sex impact on the magnetoencephalographic (MEG) cortical response to point-light human locomotion. Sex differences in the cortical MEG response to biological motion occur mostly over the right brain hemisphere. At early latencies, females exhibit a greater activation than males over the right parietal, left temporal, and right temporal cortex, a core of the social brain. At later latencies, the boosts of activation are greater in males over the right frontal and occipital cortices. The findings deliver the first evidence for gender-dependent modes in the time course and topography of the neural circuitry underpinning visual processing of biological motion. The outcome represents a framework for studying sex differences in the social brain in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Developmental tuning of reflexive attentional effect to biological motion cues

The human visual system is extremely sensitive to the direction information retrieved from biological motion. In the current study, we investigate the functional impact of this sensitivity on attentional orienting in young children. We found that children as early as 4 years old, like adults, showed a robust reflexive attentional orienting effect to the walking direction of an upright point-light walker, indicating that biological motion signals can automatically direct spatial attention at an early age. More importantly, the inversion effect associated with attentional orienting emerges by 4 years old and gradually develops into a similar pattern found in adults. These results provide strong evidence that biological motion cues can guide the distribution of spatial attention in young children, and highlight a critical development from a broadly- to finely-tuned process of utilizing biological motion cues in the human social brain.

Emotion categorization of body expressions in narrative scenarios

Humans can recognize emotions expressed through body motion with high accuracy even when the stimuli are impoverished. However, most of the research on body motion has relied on exaggerated displays of emotions. In this paper we present two experiments where we investigated whether emotional body expressions could be recognized when they were recorded during natural narration. Our actors were free to use their entire body, face, and voice to express emotions, but our resulting visual stimuli used only the upper body motion trajectories in the form of animated stick figures. Observers were asked to perform an emotion recognition task on short motion sequences using a large and balanced set of emotions (amusement, joy, pride, relief, surprise, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, shame, and neutral). Even with only upper body motion available, our results show recognition accuracy significantly above chance level and high consistency rates among observers. In our first experiment, that used more classic emotion induction setup, all emotions were well recognized. In the second study that employed narrations, four basic emotion categories (joy, anger, fear, and sadness), three non-basic emotion categories (amusement, pride, and shame) and the "neutral" category were recognized above chance. Interestingly, especially in the second experiment, observers showed a bias toward anger when recognizing the motion sequences for emotions. We discovered that similarities between motion sequences across the emotions along such properties as mean motion speed, number of peaks in the motion trajectory and mean motion span can explain a large percent of the variation in observers' responses. Overall, our results show that upper body motion is informative for emotion recognition in narrative scenarios.