Department of Neurology, Medical Faculty, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Moorenstrasse 5, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
Behav Brain Res. 2013 Jan 15;237:270-7. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2012.08.050. Epub 2012 Sep 5.
As complex social beings, people communicate, in addition to spoken language, also via nonverbal behavior. In social face-to-face situations, people readily read the affect and intentions of others in their face expressions and gestures recognizing their meaning. Importantly, the addressee further has to discriminate the meanings of the seen communicative motor acts in order to be able to react upon them appropriately. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study 15 healthy non-alexithymic right-handers observed video-clips that showed the dynamic evolution of emotional face expressions and gestures evolving from a neutral to a fully developed expression. We aimed at disentangling the cerebral circuits related to the observation of the incomplete and the subsequent discrimination of the evolved bodily expressions of emotion which are typical for everyday social situations. We show that the inferior temporal gyrus and the inferior and dorsal medial frontal cortex in both cerebral hemispheres were activated early in recognizing faces and gestures, while their subsequent discrimination involved the right dorsolateral frontal cortex. Interregional correlations showed that the involved regions constituted a widespread circuit allowing for a formal analysis of the seen expressions, their empathic processing and the subjective interpretation of their contextual meanings. Right-left comparisons revealed a greater activation of the right dorsal medial frontal cortex and the inferior temporal gyrus which supports the notion of a right hemispheric dominance for processing affective body expressions. These novel data provide a neurobiological basis for the intuitive understanding of other people which is relevant for socially appropriate decisions and intact social functioning.
作为复杂的社会生物，人们不仅通过言语进行交流，还通过非言语行为进行交流。在社交面对面的情况下，人们可以很容易地从面部表情和手势中读懂他人的情绪和意图，并理解其含义。重要的是，为了能够对其做出适当的反应，接受者还必须区分所看到的交际运动行为的含义。在这项功能磁共振成像研究中，15 名健康的非述情障碍右利手者观察了视频片段，这些片段显示了从中性到完全发展的表情的情绪面部表情和手势的动态演变。我们旨在梳理与观察不完整表情和随后对日常社交情境中典型的情绪身体表情的辨别相关的大脑回路。我们表明，在识别面孔和手势时，颞下回和双侧下内侧额皮质以及背侧额皮质较早被激活，而随后的辨别则涉及右侧背外侧额皮质。区域间相关性表明，所涉及的区域构成了一个广泛的回路，允许对所看到的表情进行形式分析、同理心处理以及对其上下文意义的主观解释。左右比较显示，右侧背内侧额皮质和颞下回的激活程度更高，这支持了右半球在处理情感身体表情方面占主导地位的观点。这些新数据为直观理解他人提供了神经生物学基础，这对于做出适当的社交决策和保持完整的社交功能至关重要。
