Experience in judging intent to harm modulates parahippocampal activity: An fMRI study with experienced CCTV operators

Abstract

Does visual experience in judging intent to harm change our brain responses? And if it does, what are the mechanisms affected? We addressed these questions by studying the abilities of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) operators, who must identify the presence of hostile intentions using only visual cues in complex scenes. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess which brain processes are modulated by CCTV experience. To this end we scanned 15 CCTV operators and 15 age and gender matched novices while they watched CCTV videos of 16 sec, and asked them to report whether each clip would end in violence or not. We carried out four separate whole-brain analyses including 3 model-based analyses and one analysis of intersubject correlation to examine differences between the two groups. The three model analyses were based on 1) experimentally pre-defined clip activity labels of fight, confrontation, playful, and neutral behaviour, 2) participants' reports of violent outcomes during the scan, and 3) visual saliency within each clip, as pre-assessed using eye-tracking. The analyses identified greater activation in the right superior frontal gyrus for operators than novices when viewing playful behaviour, and reduced activity for operators in comparison with novices in the occipital and temporal regions, irrespective of the type of clips viewed. However, in the parahippocampal gyrus, all three model-based analyses consistently showed reduced activity for experienced CCTV operators. Activity in the anterior part of the parahippocampal gyrus (uncus) was found to increase with years of CCTV experience. The intersubject correlation analysis revealed a further effect of experience, with CCTV operators showing correlated activity in fewer brain regions (superior and middle temporal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and the ventral striatum) than novices. Our results indicate that long visual experience in action observation, aimed to predict harmful behaviour, modulates brain mechanisms of intent recognition.

Differences in fMRI intersubject correlation while viewing unedited and edited videos of dance performance

“…ISC analysis has been used with fMRI to study a variety of topics, such as memory (Hasson et al, 2008a;van Kesteren et al, 2010), temporal receptive fields (Hasson et al, 2008c), communication (Hasson et al, 2012) and auditory processing of music (Abrams et al, 2013). It has also been used to identify group differences in autism (Hasson et al, 2009), schizophrenia (Kim et al, 2008), development (Cantlon and Li, 2013) and experience in action observation (Petrini et al, 2014).…”

Neural correlates of experience with CCTV surveillance of naturalistic prosocial and antisocial interactions: a reverse correlation analysis

“…These behavioural differences are in 6 conjunction with differences in brain activity as revealed by fMRI data using a whole 7 brain analysis of experienced operators and novices when they viewed 16 second 8 clips of different intentions. Results of this study showed decreased activity in the 9 anterior parahippocampal gyrus of operators suggesting more efficient neural 10 processing in judging hostile intentions (Petrini et al, 2014). represented by brief point light displays (Johansson, 1973).…”

“…As a consequence, behavioural and 1 fMRI studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of expertise on viewing 2 and evaluating CCTV footage. Evidence suggests that experienced operators, 3 compared to novices use a more systematic pattern of eye movements (Roffo et al,4 2013) when scanning scenes and exhibit higher sensitivity in judgments of hostile 5 intent and suspiciousness (Petrini et al, 2014). These behavioural differences are in 6 conjunction with differences in brain activity as revealed by fMRI data using a whole 7 brain analysis of experienced operators and novices when they viewed 16 second 8 clips of different intentions.…”

“…The novices had no prior experience of using CCTV 1 surveillance to monitor human behaviour in their work environment. Informed consent 2 was obtained and ethical approval granted by the UK Ministry of Defence Research 3 Ethics Committee (Petrini et al, 2014). The study was a within-and between-subject mixed design.…”

Statistical Analysis of Visual Attentional Patterns for Video Surveillance

“…Due to the higher ability of experienced operators in predicting violence in surveillance footage [12], we argue that understanding the way visual information is processed can be important for automated video surveillance.…”