Non-conscious recognition of emotional body language

Faces, Bodies, Social Vision as Agent Vision, and Social Consciousness

“…On the other hand, behavioral and neuroimaging results have shown that affective blindsight for bodily expressions may be at least as clearly established as that previously reported for facial expressions, and sustained by a partly overlapping neural pathway (de Gelder & Hadjikhani, 2006;Tamietto, Weiskrantz et al, 2007). This indicates that implicit processing of emotions in blindsight does not seem to be specific for faces but rather, and more generically, for biologically primitive emotional expressions that are clearly associated with action tendencies.…”

“…A similar subcortical pathway was also envisaged in a healthy human observer when facial expressions were subliminally presented (Morris et al, 1999). Thus, attention was suddenly focused on the functional integrity of this subcortical visual pathway in patients with affective blindsight and, indeed, the activation of subcortical structures composing this pathway has been repeatedly shown in different neuroimaging studies (de Gelder & Hadjikhani, 2006;de Gelder et al, 2005;Morris et al, 2001;Pegna et al, 2005).…”

“…The use of brainimaging techniques, mainly fMRI, provided direct evidence regarding the functional areas and pathways sustaining affective blindsight and the neural structures involved in it (Anders et al, 2004;de Gelder & Hadjikhani, 2006;de Gelder et al, 2005;Morris, DeGelder, Weiskrantz, & Dolan, 2001;Pegna et al, 2005). With the use of electroencephalography and its temporal resolution of the order of milliseconds, one also gets a better idea of the temporal dimension (de Gelder et al, 2002;Rossion, de Gelder, Pourtois, Guerit, & Weiskrantz, 2000).…”

From affective blindsight to emotional consciousness

“…Bodily expressions of emotions, both static and dynamic, have been the most extensively studied non-facial stimuli. Behavioral, fMRI, and psychophysiological responses from pupil dilation and facial EMG have shown that affective blindsight for bodily expressions may be at least as clearly established as that previously reported for facial expressions and entails a largely overlapping neural system (de Gelder, 2006;de Gelder & Hadjikhani, 2006;Tamietto et al, 2009;Van den Stock et al, 2011.…”

“…Contemporary neuroscience is replete with examples of social and affective processes that occur without or outside conscious experience (de Gelder, de Haan, & Heywood, 2001; de Gelder, Hortensius, & Tamietto, 2012;Tamietto & de Gelder, 2010;Vuilleumier, 2005). This evidence has contributed significantly to the burgeoning field of social and affective neuroscience.…”