Bidirectional electric communication between the inferior occipital gyrus and the amygdala during face processing

Abstract

Faces contain multifaceted information that is important for human communication. Neuroimaging studies have revealed face-specific activation in multiple brain regions, including the inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) and amygdala; it is often assumed that these regions constitute the neural network responsible for the processing of faces. However, it remains unknown whether and how these brain regions transmit information during face processing. This study investigated these questions by applying dynamic causal modeling of induced responses to human intracranial electroencephalography data recorded from the IOG and amygdala during the observation of faces, mosaics, and houses in upright and inverted orientations. Model comparisons assessing the experimental effects of upright faces versus upright houses and upright faces versus upright mosaics consistently indicated that the model having face-specific bidirectional modulatory effects between the IOG and amygdala was the most probable. The experimental effect between upright versus inverted faces also favored the model with bidirectional modulatory effects between the IOG and amygdala. The spectral profiles of modulatory effects revealed both same-frequency (e.g., gamma-gamma) and cross-frequency (e.g., theta-gamma) couplings. These results suggest that the IOG and amygdala communicate rapidly with each other using various types of oscillations for the efficient processing of faces. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4511-4524, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Theta- and Gamma-Band Activity Discriminates Face, Body and Object Perception

“…Theta synchronization was also observed when processing emotional facial expressions over different regions (Balconi and Lucchiari, 2006;Knyazev et al, 2009;Zhang et al, 2012). Furthermore, enhanced theta-gamma coupling induced by upright (as compared to inverted) faces has been shown in the right inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) after 200 ms post-stimulus onset (Sato et al, 2014(Sato et al, , 2017. These findings suggest that occipital theta-band oscillations may represent a marker of the fast, early, perceptual processing of highly salient stimuli.…”

Exploring Age-Related Changes in Resting State Functional Connectivity of the Amygdala: From Young to Middle Adulthood

“…Finally, correlation analysis does not reflect directional interactions between brain regions. Research combining behavioral tasks with tools such as dynamic causal modeling and Granger causality analysis may reveal directional functional connectivities of the amygdala ( Ide and Li, 2011 ; Hu et al, 2015 ; Zhang et al, 2015 ; Sato et al, 2017 ; Zhang Y. et al, 2017 ; Velichkovsky et al, 2018 ; Wang et al, 2018 ). This research may also benefit from studies combining functional and spectroscopy imaging of neurotransmitters ( Delli Pizzi et al, 2017a , b ) and animal work that employs pharmacological manipulations to investigate the neurochemical mechanisms underlying amygdala interaction with other brain regions ( Andolina et al, 2013 ; Chang and Ho, 2017 ; Chang and Grace, 2018 ).…”

Analyzing Neural Activity and Connectivity Using Intracranial EEG Data with SPM Software

“…Using the protocol presented herein, we analyzed intracranial EEG data in response to faces 18,19 . We recorded data from six patients during the passive viewing of faces, mosaics, and houses in upright and inverted orientations.…”