Abstract Representations of Emotions Perceived From the Face, Body, and Whole-Person Expressions in the Left Postcentral Gyrus
Emotions can be perceived through the face, body, and whole-person, while previous studies on the abstract representations of emotions only focused on the emotions of the face and body. It remains unclear whether emotions can be represented at an abstract level regardless of all three sensory cues i...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2018-10-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00419/full |
| _version_ | 1818850907725496320 |
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| author | Linjing Cao Junhai Xu Xiaoli Yang Xianglin Li Baolin Liu Baolin Liu |
| author_facet | Linjing Cao Junhai Xu Xiaoli Yang Xianglin Li Baolin Liu Baolin Liu |
| author_sort | Linjing Cao |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Emotions can be perceived through the face, body, and whole-person, while previous studies on the abstract representations of emotions only focused on the emotions of the face and body. It remains unclear whether emotions can be represented at an abstract level regardless of all three sensory cues in specific brain regions. In this study, we used the representational similarity analysis (RSA) to explore the hypothesis that the emotion category is independent of all three stimulus types and can be decoded based on the activity patterns elicited by different emotions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were collected when participants classified emotions (angry, fearful, and happy) expressed by videos of faces, bodies, and whole-persons. An abstract emotion model was defined to estimate the neural representational structure in the whole-brain RSA, which assumed that the neural patterns were significantly correlated in within-emotion conditions ignoring the stimulus types but uncorrelated in between-emotion conditions. A neural representational dissimilarity matrix (RDM) for each voxel was then compared to the abstract emotion model to examine whether specific clusters could identify the abstract representation of emotions that generalized across stimulus types. The significantly positive correlations between neural RDMs and models suggested that the abstract representation of emotions could be successfully captured by the representational space of specific clusters. The whole-brain RSA revealed an emotion-specific but stimulus category-independent neural representation in the left postcentral gyrus, left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and right superior temporal sulcus (STS). Further cluster-based MVPA revealed that only the left postcentral gyrus could successfully distinguish three types of emotions for the two stimulus type pairs (face-body and body-whole person) and happy versus angry/fearful, which could be considered as positive versus negative for three stimulus type pairs, when the cross-modal classification analysis was performed. Our study suggested that abstract representations of three emotions (angry, fearful, and happy) could extend from the face and body stimuli to whole-person stimuli and the findings of this study provide support for abstract representations of emotions in the left postcentral gyrus. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-19T06:56:36Z |
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| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1662-5161 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-19T06:56:36Z |
| publishDate | 2018-10-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
| spelling | doaj.art-b4a441faa0d84c188a338500b3be957b2022-12-21T20:31:31ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Human Neuroscience1662-51612018-10-011210.3389/fnhum.2018.00419383662Abstract Representations of Emotions Perceived From the Face, Body, and Whole-Person Expressions in the Left Postcentral GyrusLinjing Cao0Junhai Xu1Xiaoli Yang2Xianglin Li3Baolin Liu4Baolin Liu5School of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Cognitive Computing and Application, Tianjin University, Tianjin, ChinaSchool of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Cognitive Computing and Application, Tianjin University, Tianjin, ChinaSchool of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Cognitive Computing and Application, Tianjin University, Tianjin, ChinaMedical Imaging Research Institute, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, ChinaSchool of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Cognitive Computing and Application, Tianjin University, Tianjin, ChinaState Key Laboratory of Intelligent Technology and Systems, Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, ChinaEmotions can be perceived through the face, body, and whole-person, while previous studies on the abstract representations of emotions only focused on the emotions of the face and body. It remains unclear whether emotions can be represented at an abstract level regardless of all three sensory cues in specific brain regions. In this study, we used the representational similarity analysis (RSA) to explore the hypothesis that the emotion category is independent of all three stimulus types and can be decoded based on the activity patterns elicited by different emotions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were collected when participants classified emotions (angry, fearful, and happy) expressed by videos of faces, bodies, and whole-persons. An abstract emotion model was defined to estimate the neural representational structure in the whole-brain RSA, which assumed that the neural patterns were significantly correlated in within-emotion conditions ignoring the stimulus types but uncorrelated in between-emotion conditions. A neural representational dissimilarity matrix (RDM) for each voxel was then compared to the abstract emotion model to examine whether specific clusters could identify the abstract representation of emotions that generalized across stimulus types. The significantly positive correlations between neural RDMs and models suggested that the abstract representation of emotions could be successfully captured by the representational space of specific clusters. The whole-brain RSA revealed an emotion-specific but stimulus category-independent neural representation in the left postcentral gyrus, left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and right superior temporal sulcus (STS). Further cluster-based MVPA revealed that only the left postcentral gyrus could successfully distinguish three types of emotions for the two stimulus type pairs (face-body and body-whole person) and happy versus angry/fearful, which could be considered as positive versus negative for three stimulus type pairs, when the cross-modal classification analysis was performed. Our study suggested that abstract representations of three emotions (angry, fearful, and happy) could extend from the face and body stimuli to whole-person stimuli and the findings of this study provide support for abstract representations of emotions in the left postcentral gyrus.https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00419/fullemotionrepresentational similarity analysisfMRIabstract representationwhole-brain searchlight |
| spellingShingle | Linjing Cao Junhai Xu Xiaoli Yang Xianglin Li Baolin Liu Baolin Liu Abstract Representations of Emotions Perceived From the Face, Body, and Whole-Person Expressions in the Left Postcentral Gyrus Frontiers in Human Neuroscience emotion representational similarity analysis fMRI abstract representation whole-brain searchlight |
| title | Abstract Representations of Emotions Perceived From the Face, Body, and Whole-Person Expressions in the Left Postcentral Gyrus |
| title_full | Abstract Representations of Emotions Perceived From the Face, Body, and Whole-Person Expressions in the Left Postcentral Gyrus |
| title_fullStr | Abstract Representations of Emotions Perceived From the Face, Body, and Whole-Person Expressions in the Left Postcentral Gyrus |
| title_full_unstemmed | Abstract Representations of Emotions Perceived From the Face, Body, and Whole-Person Expressions in the Left Postcentral Gyrus |
| title_short | Abstract Representations of Emotions Perceived From the Face, Body, and Whole-Person Expressions in the Left Postcentral Gyrus |
| title_sort | abstract representations of emotions perceived from the face body and whole person expressions in the left postcentral gyrus |
| topic | emotion representational similarity analysis fMRI abstract representation whole-brain searchlight |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00419/full |
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