A computational neuroethology perspective on body and expression perception

Gelder, Béatrice de; Solanas, Marta Poyo

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2021.05.010

Cited by 54 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 143 publications

(205 reference statements)

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“…The 10 categories > baseline contrast showed activation in body-sensitive areas, and areas of the action observation network ( Fig. 2E ), consistent with the literature (see de Gelder and Poyo Solanas, 2021 for a review).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

“…The left mSTS was also functionally connected to the R hippocampus; the left PMd was also functionally connected to the bilateral thalamus, pulvinar, cerebellum, the R septal nuclei, and the bilateral red nuclei (anatomical locations clearly observable in the T2*-weighted functional images, Figure S8 ). The involvement of the hippocampus, the septal nuclei and the red nuclei in bodily action and emotion understanding were not routinely observed in previous bodily-action perception studies with univariate methods (see de Gelder and Poyo Solanas, 2021 for a review).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

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Subjective understanding of actions and emotions requires interaction of the semantic and action observation networks

Zhan

Rw²,

B³

2021

Preprint

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How we subjectively generate an understanding of other people's bodily actions and emotions is not well understood. In this 7T fMRI study, we examined the representational geometry of bodily action- and emotion-understanding by mapping individual subjective reports with word embeddings, besides using conventional univariate/multivariate analyses with predefined categories. Dimensionality reduction revealed that the representations for perceived action and emotion were high dimensional, each correlated to but were not reducible to the predefined action and emotion categories. With searchlight representational similarity analysis, we found the left middle superior temporal sulcus and left dorsal premotor cortex corresponded to the subjective action and emotion representations. Furthermore using task-residual functional connectivity and hierarchical clustering, we found that areas in the action observation network and the semantic/default-mode network were functionally connected to these two seed regions and showed similar representations. Our study provides direct evidence that both networks were concurrently involved in subjective action and emotion understanding.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Subjective understanding of actions and emotions requires interaction of the semantic and action observation networks

Zhan

Rw²,

B³

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…The discovery of MNs in different somatomotor and emotional areas of the rodent brain is a crucial prelude to new research avenues, from the cellular to the network level, concerning the highly debated topic of the ontogenetic development of sensorimotor mapping of otherness onto self, which is almost impossible to tackle in human and non-human primates. Furthermore, the growing attention to the brain processes that support the preparation of adaptive behavioral responses to others in social settings [39,100,105] strongly indicates the need to conduct basic animal and human studies based on more ethologically relevant paradigms and approaches, that is, to investigate pairs or groups of simultaneously recorded brains as a unique system during unconstrained social exchanges and interactions. Gradually abandoning the one-brain paradigm in favor of a multi-brain paradigm is of crucial importance to understanding the brain-behavior relationship in ecologically relevant conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mirror neurons 30 years later: implications and applications

Bonini

Rotunno

Arcuri

et al. 2022

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

118

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“…Together, these findings highlight the role of facial expressions for the inference of action intentions in social settings. Thus, in addition to cues from gaze (Ambrosini et al, 2015;Cavallo et al, 2015) and body posture (De Gelder, 2006;de Gelder & Poyo Solanas, 2021), facial expressions provide important information for upcoming actions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observers predict actions from facial emotional expressions during real-time social interactions

Kroczek¹,

Lingnau²,

Schwind³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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In face-to-face social interactions, emotional expressions provide insights into the mental state of an interactive partner. This information can be crucial to infer action intentions and react adaptively towards another person’s actions. Here we investigate how facial emotional expressions impact subjective experience and physiological and behavioral responses to social actions during real-time interactions. Thirty-two participants interacted with virtual agents while fully immersed in Virtual Reality. Agents displayed an angry or happy facial expression before they directed an appetitive (fist bump) or aversive (punch) social action towards the participant. Participants responded to these actions, either by reciprocating the fist bump or by defending the punch. For all interactions, subjective experience was measured using ratings. In addition, physiological responses (electrodermal activity, electrocardiogram) and participants’ response times were recorded. Aversive actions were judged to be more arousing and less pleasant relative to appetitive actions. In addition, angry expressions increased heart rate relative to happy expressions. Crucially, interaction effects between facial emotion and action were observed. Angry expressions reduced pleasantness stronger for appetitive compared to aversive actions. Furthermore, skin conductance responses to aversive actions were increased for happy compared to angry expressions and reaction times were faster to aversive compared to appetitive actions when agents showed an angry expression. These data indicate that observers used facial emotional expression to generate expectations for particular actions. Consequently, the present study demonstrates that observers integrate information from facial emotional expressions with actions during social interactions.

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A computational neuroethology perspective on body and expression perception

Abstract: Body and expression perception may be sustained by midlevel feature computations rather than by body categoryselective processes.

Cited by 54 publications

References 143 publications

Subjective understanding of actions and emotions requires interaction of the semantic and action observation networks

Subjective understanding of actions and emotions requires interaction of the semantic and action observation networks

Mirror neurons 30 years later: implications and applications

Observers predict actions from facial emotional expressions during real-time social interactions

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