Task Modulation of Single-Neuron Activity in the Human Amygdala and Hippocampus

Cao, Runnan; Todorov, Alexander; Brandmeir, Nicholas; Wang, Shuo

doi:10.1523/eneuro.0398-21.2021

Cited by 10 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Our own reports have further revealed context-dependent modulation of some of these brain areas during judgment of facial trustworthiness and dominance [4,121]. In particular, the human amygdala plays a critical role in social perception [17,122] and encode various social trait judgments of faces, which has been supported by lesion [123], fMRI [4,105,124], and neurophysiology [121] studies. It is worth noting that these prior functional studies primarily focused on facial trustworthiness; however, humans use hundreds of different trait words to describe spontaneous trait judgments of faces [114,116,117] and automatically evaluate faces on multiple trait dimensions simultaneously.…”

Section: Neural Correlates Of Social Trait Judgmentmentioning

confidence: 53%

“…A meta-analysis of 29 neuroimaging studies for social evaluation of faces has revealed that across negative face evaluations the most consistent activations are in the bilateral amygdala whereas across positive face evaluations the most consistent activations are in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC), medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), left caudate, and nucleus accumbens (NAcc) [120]. Our own reports have further revealed context-dependent modulation of some of these brain areas during judgment of facial trustworthiness and dominance [4,121]. In particular, the human amygdala plays a critical role in social perception [17,122] and encode various social trait judgments of faces, which has been supported by lesion [123], fMRI [4,105,124], and neurophysiology [121] studies.…”

Section: Neural Correlates Of Social Trait Judgmentmentioning

confidence: 74%

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Multimodal investigations of human face perception in neurotypical and autistic adults

Wang¹,

Sun²,

Cao³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Faces are among the most important visual stimuli that we perceive in everyday life. Although there is a plethora of literature studying many aspects of face perception, the vast majority of them focuses on a single aspect of face perception using unimodal approaches. In this review, we advocate for studying face perception using multimodal cognitive neuroscience approaches. We highlight two case studies: the first study investigates ambiguity in facial expressions of emotion, and the second study investigates social trait judgment. In the first set of studies, we revealed an event-related potential that signals emotion ambiguity and we found convergent response to emotion ambiguity using functional neuroimaging and single-neuron recordings. In the second set of studies, we discussed recent findings about neural substrates underlying comprehensive social evaluation, and the relationship between personality factors and social trait judgements. Notably, in both sets of studies, we provided an in-depth discussion of altered face perception in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and offered a computational account for the behavioral and neural markers of atypical facial processing in ASD. Finally, we suggest new perspectives for studying face perception. All data discussed in the case studies of this review are publicly available.

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Section: Neural Correlates Of Social Trait Judgmentmentioning

confidence: 53%

Section: Neural Correlates Of Social Trait Judgmentmentioning

confidence: 74%

Multimodal investigations of human face perception in neurotypical and autistic adults

Wang¹,

Sun²,

Cao³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…124 Our own findings have further revealed context-dependent modulation of some of these brain areas during judgment of facial trustworthiness and dominance. 8,120 In particular, the human amygdala plays a critical role in social perception 28,125 and encodes various social trait judgments of faces, which has been supported by lesion studies, 126 fMRI studies, 8,105,119 and neurophysiology studies. 120 It is worth noting that these prior functional studies primarily focused on facial trustworthiness; however, humans use hundreds of different trait words to describe spontaneous trait judgments of faces 115,117,118 and automatically evaluate faces on multiple trait Our recent study has addressed this need, using a comprehensive face space (i.e., measuring trait judgments representative of the warmth-competence-femininity-youth model) (Figure 5A) and singleneuron recordings in the human amygdala and hippocampus.…”

Section: Fmri and Human Single-neuron Recordings Reveal Neural Correl...mentioning

confidence: 90%

Multimodal investigations of emotional face processing and social trait judgment of faces

Yu,

Lin,

Sun

et al. 2023

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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Faces are among the most important visual stimuli that humans perceive in everyday life. While extensive literature has examined emotional processing and social evaluations of faces, most studies have examined either topic using unimodal approaches. In this review, we promote the use of multimodal cognitive neuroscience approaches to study these processes, using two lines of research as examples: ambiguity in facial expressions of emotion and social trait judgment of faces. In the first set of studies, we identified an event‐related potential that signals emotion ambiguity using electroencephalography and we found convergent neural responses to emotion ambiguity using functional neuroimaging and single‐neuron recordings. In the second set of studies, we discuss how different neuroimaging and personality‐dimensional approaches together provide new insights into social trait judgments of faces. In both sets of studies, we provide an in‐depth comparison between neurotypicals and people with autism spectrum disorder. We offer a computational account for the behavioral and neural markers of the different facial processing between the two groups. Finally, we suggest new practices for studying the emotional processing and social evaluations of faces. All data discussed in the case studies of this review are publicly available.

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“…An early experiment in humans did report a small number of MTL neurons that showed responses to words and also to unrelated faces (Heit et al, 1988). Some studies in humans have examined responses to the same stimuli based on task demands, for example, finding differences in responses across regions to different task demands when viewing the same faces (Cao, Todorov, et al, 2022). In another experiment, asking participants to flexibly switch between a recognition memory and categorization task led to different population-level representations of the task demands in the medial frontal cortex (Minxha et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe flexibly shift representations across spatial and memory tasks

Donoghue

Cao

Han

et al. 2023

Preprint

Self Cite

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Investigations into how individual neurons encode behavioral variables of interest have revealed specific representations in single neurons, such as place and object cells, as well as a wide range of cells with conjunctive encodings or mixed selectivity. However, as most experiments examine neural activity within individual tasks, it is currently unclear if and how neural representations change across different task contexts. Within this discussion, the medial temporal lobe is particularly salient, as it is known to be important for multiple behaviors including spatial navigation and memory, however the relationship between these functions is currently unclear. Here, to investigate how representations in single neurons vary across different task contexts in the MTL, we collected and analyzed single-neuron activity from human participants as they completed a paired-task session consisting of a passive-viewing visual working memory and a spatial navigation and memory task. Five patients contributed 22 paired-task sessions, which were spike sorted together to allow for the same putative single neurons to be compared between the different tasks. Within each task, we replicated concept-related activations in the working memory task, as well as target-location and serial-position responsive cells in the navigation task. When comparing neuronal activity between tasks, we first established that a significant number of neurons maintained the same kind of representation, responding to stimuli presentations across tasks. Further, we found cells that changed the nature of their representation across tasks, including a significant number of cells that were stimulus responsive in the working memory task that responded to serial position in the spatial task. Overall, our results support a flexible encoding of multiple, distinct aspects of different tasks by single neurons in the human MTL, whereby some individual neurons change the nature of their feature coding between task contexts.

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Task Modulation of Single-Neuron Activity in the Human Amygdala and Hippocampus

Cited by 10 publications

References 63 publications

Multimodal investigations of human face perception in neurotypical and autistic adults

Multimodal investigations of human face perception in neurotypical and autistic adults

Multimodal investigations of emotional face processing and social trait judgment of faces

Single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe flexibly shift representations across spatial and memory tasks

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