Department of Neuropsychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44801, Bochum, Germany.
Department of Experimental Psychology and Methods, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44801, Bochum, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2017 Aug 23;7(1):9191. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-09295-x.
This study examines the processing of visual information by the olfactory system in humans. Recent data point to the processing of visual stimuli by the piriform cortex, a region mainly known as part of the primary olfactory cortex. Moreover, the piriform cortex generates predictive templates of olfactory stimuli to facilitate olfactory processing. This study fills the gap relating to the question whether this region is also capable of preprocessing emotional visual information. To gain insight into the preprocessing and transfer of emotional visual information into olfactory processing, we recorded hemodynamic responses during affective priming using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Odors of different valence (pleasant, neutral and unpleasant) were primed by images of emotional facial expressions (happy, neutral and disgust). Our findings are the first to demonstrate that the piriform cortex preprocesses emotional visual information prior to any olfactory stimulation and that the emotional connotation of this preprocessing is subsequently transferred and integrated into an extended olfactory network for olfactory processing.
本研究探讨了人类嗅觉系统对视觉信息的处理。最近的数据表明，嗅球皮层（piri form cortex）对视觉刺激进行处理，而该区域主要被认为是初级嗅觉皮层的一部分。此外，嗅球皮层生成嗅觉刺激的预测模板，以促进嗅觉处理。本研究填补了该区域是否也能够预处理情绪视觉信息这一问题的空白。为了深入了解情绪视觉信息预处理以及将其转移到嗅觉处理中的过程，我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）记录了情感启动期间的血液动力学反应。使用不同效价（愉快、中性和不愉快）的气味来启动情绪面部表情（快乐、中性和厌恶）的图像。我们的发现首次证明，嗅球皮层在任何嗅觉刺激之前都对情绪视觉信息进行预处理，并且这种预处理的情感内涵随后被转移并整合到扩展的嗅觉网络中，以进行嗅觉处理。
