Two different faces of threat. Comparing the neural systems for recognizing fear and anger in dynamic body expressions

Abstract

Being exposed to fear or anger signals makes us feel threatened and prompts us to prepare an adaptive response. Yet, while fear and anger behaviors are both threat signals, what counts as an adaptive response is often quite different. In contrast with fear, anger is often displayed with the aim of altering the behavior of the agent to which it is addressed. To identify brain responses that are common or specific to the perception of these two types of threat signals, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and asked subjects to recognize dynamic actions expressing fear, anger and neutral behaviors. As compared with neutral actions, the perception of fear and anger behaviors elicited comparable activity increases in the left amygdala and temporal cortices as well as in the ventrolateral and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Whereas the perception of fear elicited specific activity in the right temporoparietal junction, the perception of anger triggered condition-specific activity in a wider set of regions comprising the anterior temporal lobe, the premotor cortex and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, consistent with the hypothesis that coping with threat from exposure to anger requires additional contextual information and behavioral adjustments.

Early Binding of Gaze, Gesture, and Emotion: Neural Time Course and Correlates

“…At ϳ170 ms, emotional processing occurs in the amygdala, independently of self-directed directional cues (gaze direction and pointing gesture). The activation of the amygdala while observers perceived bodily expressions of anger replicates previous studies (Pichon et al, 2009) and supports its proposed role in the automatic detection of threat (Emery and Amaral, 2000;LeDoux, 2000;Amaral et al, 2003;Feinstein et al, 2011). Amygdala damage diminishes the brain's response to threatening faces at both the ϳ100 -150 and ϳ500 -600 ms time ranges (Rotshtein et al, 2010), and, in both infants and adults, the interaction between gaze direction and emotion takes place at ϳ200 -300 ms (Klucharev and Sams, 2004;Rigato et al, 2010).…”

“…Hence, the highest level of activity in the PM reflects the highest degree of potential social interaction, which corresponds here to facing an angry person pointing and looking toward oneself. Indeed, the expression of direct anger signals a probable physical and/or symbolic attack (Schupp et al, 2004), is perceived as threatening (Dimberg and Ohman, 1983;Dimberg, 1986;Strauss et al, 2005), and triggers adaptive action in the observer (Frijda, 1986;Pichon et al, 2008Pichon et al, , 2009Pichon et al, , 2012Grèzes et al, 2011;Van den Stock et al, 2011).…”

Why bodies? Twelve reasons for including bodily expressions in affective neuroscience

“…Available studies, whether focusing on recognition per se or preparing a set of validated body stimuli, have indeed found a high degree of agreement among observers (de Meijer 1989;Dittrich et al 1996;Wallbott 1998;Hadjikhani & de Gelder 2003;Atkinson et al 2004). A similar high consensus is found for videoclips depicting emotions or emotion expressing instrumental actions (Grèzes et al 2007;Pichon et al 2008Pichon et al , 2009. As is to be expected, performance is lower when point-light stimuli are used instead of full images.…”

Individual differences in structural and functional connectivity predict speed of emotion discrimination

“…This finding suggests that angry faces might engage cortical regions related to evaluative, contextual processing more strongly than fearful faces, perhaps because anger directs attention towards the angry individual, whereas fear directs attention towards the ambiguous cause of the threat (Grosbras & Paus, 2006;Pichon, de Gelder & Grèzes, 2009). Fearful faces additionally engaged the amygdala and fusiform gyrus, which is in line with previous findings and suggests increased processing of fearful compared to angry facial expressions within regions of the core and extended emotional faces processing systems (Whalen et al, 2001).…”