Shared states: using MVPA to test neural overlap between self-focused emotion imagery and other-focused emotion understanding

Abstract

The present study tested whether the neural patterns that support imagining ‘performing an action’, ‘feeling a bodily sensation’ or ‘being in a situation’ are directly involved in understanding other people’s actions, bodily sensations and situations. Subjects imagined the content of short sentences describing emotional actions, interoceptive sensations and situations (self-focused task), and processed scenes and focused on how the target person was expressing an emotion, what this person was feeling, and why this person was feeling an emotion (other-focused task). Using a linear support vector machine classifier on brain-wide multi-voxel patterns, we accurately decoded each individual class in the self-focused task. When generalizing the classifier from the self-focused task to the other-focused task, we also accurately decoded whether subjects focused on the emotional actions, interoceptive sensations and situations of others. These results show that the neural patterns that underlie self-imagined experience are involved in understanding the experience of other people. This supports the theoretical assumption that the basic components of emotion experience and understanding share resources in the brain.

At the Neural Intersection Between Language and Emotion

“…Indeed, many studies of language and emotion in the neuroscience literature focus exclusively on perception of emotion in facial actions due to the ease of presenting this type of stimulus in the fMRI environment or to patients with brain lesions or implanted electrodes; this is a limitation of this literature. Moreover, several models of emotion across theoretical traditions suggest that there are shared psychological (and neural) mechanisms that underlie both facets (Barrett & Satpute, 2013;Ekman & Cordaro, 2011;Lindquist, MacCormack, & Shablack, 2015, Lindquist, Satpute, & Gendron, 2015Niedenthal, 2007;Oosterwijk et al, 2017;Tomkins, 1962;Wager et al, 2015;Wicker et al, 2003). Thus, we refer to studies of emotion perception when relevant since both literatures may inform certain shared mechanisms when it comes to the neural basis of language and emotion.…”

Dissociating Empathy From Perspective-Taking: Evidence From Intra- and Inter-Individual Differences Research

“…These activations seem to be relatively high-level, affective representations, as the specific patterns associated with one negative state, for instance, empathic pain, enable predictions of other negative states such as empathic disgust or unfairness ( 11 ). Furthermore, first-hand and empathic emotion experience—being stimulated painfully or watching someone else in pain—also lead to mutually predictive activation patterns in anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex ( 12 , 13 ). The observation of such “shared neural networks” has been interpreted as agreeing with simulation theory's account of how we understand others—we impersonate them and imitate their mental states ( 14 ).…”

Dynamic grounding of emotion concepts

“…A recent fMRI study expanded on the idea that, depending on current conceptual needs, emotion stimuli trigger distinct embodied simulations, and that such distinct simulations are involved in processing of emotion in both the self and in others [48]. Specifically, the authors asked participants to read sentences describing different aspects of emotion -action (e.g.…”