van de Riet Wim A C, Grezes Julie, de Gelder Beatrice
Cognitive and Affective Neurosciences Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, The Netherlands.
Soc Neurosci. 2009;4(2):101-20. doi: 10.1080/17470910701865367.
Many studies provide support for the role of the fusiform gyrus in face recognition and its sensitivity to emotional expressions. Recently, category-specific representation was also observed for neutral human bodies in the middle temporal/middle occipital gyrus (extrastriate body area) but it is not clear whether this area is also sensitive to emotional bodily expressions. Besides these areas, other regions that process the affective information carried by the face and the body may be common and/or specific to the face or the body. To clarify these issues we performed a systematic comparison of how the whole brain processes faces and bodies and how their affective information is represented. Participants categorized emotional facial and bodily expressions while brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Our results show that, first, the amygdala and the fusiform gyrus are sensitive to recognition of facial and bodily fear signals. Secondly, the extrastriate body area-area V5/MT is specifically involved in processing bodies without being sensitive to the emotion displayed. Thirdly, other important areas such as the superior temporal sulcus, the parietal lobe and subcortical structures represent selectively facial and bodily expressions. Finally, some face/body differences in activation are a function of the emotion expressed.
许多研究支持梭状回在人脸识别中的作用及其对情绪表达的敏感性。最近，在颞中/枕中回（纹外体区）也观察到了对中性人体的类别特异性表征，但尚不清楚该区域是否也对情绪性身体表达敏感。除了这些区域，处理面部和身体所携带情感信息的其他区域可能对两者是共同的和/或特定于面部或身体的。为了阐明这些问题，我们对全脑如何处理面部和身体以及它们的情感信息如何表征进行了系统比较。参与者对面部和身体的情绪表达进行分类，同时使用功能磁共振成像测量大脑活动。我们的结果表明，首先，杏仁核和梭状回对面部和身体的恐惧信号识别敏感。其次，纹外体区——V5/MT区专门参与身体处理，对所显示的情绪不敏感。第三，其他重要区域，如上颞沟、顶叶和皮质下结构，选择性地表征面部和身体的表情。最后，激活中的一些面部/身体差异是所表达情绪的函数。
