Gender specific brain activations for perceiving threat from dynamic faces and bodies
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1
University of Tilburg, Netherlands
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2
Ecole Normale Superieure, France
We express and communicate emotions with our whole body, the face included. Are faces better signal bearers than bodies, does each contribute in its own way depending on the emotion and does it matter for the observer whether the actor is male or female? We undertook a systematic comparison of the neurofunctional network dedicated to processing facial and bodily expressions. Our design allowed us to measure the role of gender. Two event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments using an oddball task were performed. The first experiment used short video fragments of angry and neutral facial and bodily expressions of male and female actors. The second experiment used fearful and neutral expressions. The amygdala was sensitive to all expressions, but significantly more to faces. The cuneus, fusiform gyrus, middle temporal gyrus (MT/V5/EBA), superior temporal sulcus and temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), superior parietal lobule, primary somatosensory cortex (SI) and at a subcortical level, the thalamus, were specifically involved in processing bodies. It is suggested that V1 concerns early emotion detection, in particular facial expressions. Threatening body expressions, whether fearful or angry, modulated activity in MT/V5/EBA, right TPJ and SI. Another major finding is that emotions expressed by male and female actors were equally well recognized, but activation of emotion processing areas only appeared when observers watched threat from male actors. In conclusion, our results show the importance for current theories of how emotional stimuli are processed of using face as well as body images and of taking into consideration the gender of observer and actor.
Conference:
41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting, Rhodes Island, Greece, 13 Sep - 18 Sep, 2009.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster presentations
Citation:
Kret
M,
Grezes
J,
Pichon
S and
De-Gelder
B
(2009). Gender specific brain activations for perceiving threat from dynamic faces and bodies.
Conference Abstract:
41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.08.2009.09.203
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Received:
10 Jun 2009;
Published Online:
10 Jun 2009.
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Correspondence:
Mariska Kret, University of Tilburg, Tilburg, Netherlands, m.e.kret@uvt.nl