Jan Van den Stock

Body expressions influence recognition of emotions in the face and voice

The most familiar emotional signals consist of faces, voices, and whole-body expressions, but so far research on emotions expressed by the whole body is sparse. The authors investigated recognition of whole-body expressions of emotion in three experiments. In the first experiment, participants performed a body expression-matching task. Results indicate good recognition of all emotions, with fear being the hardest to recognize. In the second experiment, two alternative forced choice categorizations of the facial expression of a compound face-body stimulus were strongly influenced by the bodily expression. This effect was a function of the ambiguity of the facial expression. In the third experiment, recognition of emotional tone of voice was similarly influenced by task irrelevant emotional body expressions. Taken together, the findings illustrate the importance of emotional whole-body expressions in communication either when viewed on their own or, as is often the case in realistic circumstances, in combination with facial expressions and emotional voices.

Standing up for the body. Recent progress in uncovering the networks involved in the perception of bodies and bodily expressions.

Recent studies of monkeys and humans have identified several brain regions that respond to bodies. Researchers have so far mainly addressed the same questions about bodies and bodily expressions that are already familiar from three decades of face and facial expression studies. Our present goal is to review behavioral, electrophysiological and neurofunctional studies on whole body and bodily expression perception against the background of what is known about face perception. We review all currently available evidence in more detail than done so far, but we also argue for a more theoretically motivated comparison of faces and bodies that reflects some broader concerns than only modularity or category specificity of faces or bodies.

Chemotherapy-induced structural changes in cerebral white matter and its correlation with impaired cognitive functioning in breast cancer patients

A subgroup of patients with breast cancer suffers from mild cognitive impairment after chemotherapy. To uncover the neural substrate of these mental complaints, we examined cerebral white matter (WM) integrity after chemotherapy using magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in combination with detailed cognitive assessment. Postchemotherapy breast cancer patients (n = 17) and matched healthy controls (n = 18) were recruited for DTI and neuropsychological testing, including the self‐report cognitive failure questionnaire (CFQ). Differences in DTI WM integrity parameters [fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD)] between patients and healthy controls were assessed using a voxel‐based two‐sample‐t‐test. In comparison with healthy controls, the patient group demonstrated decreased FA in frontal and temporal WM tracts and increased MD in frontal WM. These differences were also confirmed when comparing this patient group with an additional control group of nonchemotherapy‐treated breast cancer patients (n = 10). To address the heterogeneity observed in cognitive function after chemotherapy, we performed a voxel‐based correlation analysis between FA values and individual neuropsychological test scores. Significant correlations of FA with neuropsychological tests covering the domain of attention and processing/psychomotor speed were found in temporal and parietal WM tracts. Furthermore, CFQ scores correlated negatively in frontal and parietal WM. These studies show that chemotherapy seems to affect WM integrity and that parameters derived from DTI have the required sensitivity to quantify neural changes related to chemotherapy‐induced mild cognitive impairment. Hum Brain Mapp 32:480–493, 2011.

Beyond the face: exploring rapid influences of context on face processing.

Humans optimize behavior by deriving context-based expectations. Contextual data that are important for survival are extracted rapidly, using coarse information, adaptive decision strategies, and dedicated neural infrastructure. In the field of object perception, the influence of a surrounding context has been a major research theme, and it has generated a large literature. That visual context, as typically provided by natural scenes, facilitates object recognition as has been convincingly demonstrated (Bar, M. (2004) Nat. Rev. Neurosci., 5: 617-629). Just like objects, faces are generally encountered as part of a natural scene. Thus far, the facial expression literature has neglected such context and treats facial expressions as if they stand on their own. This constitutes a major gap in our knowledge. Facial expressions tend to appear in a context of head and body orientations, body movements, posture changes, and other object-related actions with a similar or at least a closely related meaning. For instance, one would expect a frightened face when confronted to an external danger to be at least accompanied by withdrawal movements of head and shoulders. Furthermore, some cues provided by the environment or the context in which a facial expression appears may have a direct relation with the emotion displayed by the face. The brain may even fill in the natural scene context typically associated with the facial expression. Recognition of the facial expression may also profit from processing the vocal emotion as well as the emotional body language that normally accompany it. Here we review the emerging evidence on how the immediate visual and auditory contexts influence the recognition of facial expressions.

The Bodily Expressive Action Stimulus Test (BEAST). Construction and validation of a stimulus basis for measuring perception of whole body expression of emotions

Whole body expressions are among the main visual stimulus categories that are naturally associated with faces and the neuroscientific investigation of how body expressions are processed has entered the research agenda this last decade. Here we describe the stimulus set of whole body expressions termed bodily expressive action stimulus test (BEAST), and we provide validation data for use of these materials by the community of emotion researchers. The database was composed of 254 whole body expressions from 46 actors expressing 4 emotions (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness). In all pictures the face of the actor was blurred and participants were asked to categorize the emotions expressed in the stimuli in a four alternative-forced-choice task. The results show that all emotions are well recognized, with sadness being the easiest, followed by fear, whereas happiness was the most difficult. The BEAST appears a valuable addition to currently available tools for assessing recognition of affective signals. It can be used in explicit recognition tasks as well as in matching tasks and in implicit tasks, combined either with facial expressions, with affective prosody, or presented with affective pictures as context in healthy subjects as well as in clinical populations.

Cortico-subcortical visual, somatosensory, and motor activations for perceiving dynamic whole-body emotional expressions with and without striate cortex (V1)

Patients with striate cortex damage and clinical blindness retain the ability to process certain visual properties of stimuli that they are not aware of seeing. Here we investigated the neural correlates of residual visual perception for dynamic whole-body emotional actions. Angry and neutral emotional whole-body actions were presented in the intact and blind visual hemifield of a cortically blind patient with unilateral destruction of striate cortex. Comparisons of angry vs. neutral actions performed separately in the blind and intact visual hemifield showed in both cases increased activation in primary somatosensory, motor, and premotor cortices. Activations selective for intact hemifield presentation of angry compared with neutral actions were located subcortically in the right lateral geniculate nucleus and cortically in the superior temporal sulcus, prefrontal cortex, precuneus, and intraparietal sulcus. Activations specific for blind hemifield presentation of angry compared with neutral actions were found in the bilateral superior colliculus, pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus, amygdala, and right fusiform gyrus. Direct comparison of emotional modulation in the blind vs. intact visual hemifield revealed selective activity in the right superior colliculus and bilateral pulvinar for angry expressions, thereby showing a selective involvement of these subcortical structures in nonconscious visual emotion perception.

Intact navigation skills after bilateral loss of striate cortex

A patient with bilateral damage to primary visual (striated) cortex has provided the opportunity to assess just what visual capacities are possible in the absence of geniculo-striate pathways. Patient TN suffered two strokes in succession, lesioning each visual cortex in turn and causing clinical blindness over his whole visual field. Functional and anatomical brain imaging assessments showed that TN completely lacks any functional visual cortex. We report here that, among other retained abilities, he can successfully navigate down the extent of a long corridor in which various barriers were placed. A video recording shows him skillfully avoiding and turning around the blockages. This demonstrates that extra-striate pathways in humans can sustain sophisticated visuo-spatial skills in the absence of perceptual awareness, akin to what has been previously reported in monkeys. It remains to be determined which of the several extra-striate pathways account for TNs intact navigation skills.

Neural Correlates of Perceiving Emotional Faces and Bodies in Developmental Prosopagnosia: An Event-Related fMRI-Study

Many people experience transient difficulties in recognizing faces but only a small number of them cannot recognize their family members when meeting them unexpectedly. Such face blindness is associated with serious problems in everyday life. A better understanding of the neuro-functional basis of impaired face recognition may be achieved by a careful comparison with an equally unique object category and by a adding a more realistic setting involving neutral faces as well facial expressions. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neuro-functional basis of perceiving faces and bodies in three developmental prosopagnosics (DP) and matched healthy controls. Our approach involved materials consisting of neutral faces and bodies as well as faces and bodies expressing fear or happiness. The first main result is that the presence of emotional information has a different effect in the patient vs. the control group in the fusiform face area (FFA). Neutral faces trigger lower activation in the DP group, compared to the control group, while activation for facial expressions is the same in both groups. The second main result is that compared to controls, DPs have increased activation for bodies in the inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) and for neutral faces in the extrastriate body area (EBA), indicating that body and face sensitive processes are less categorically segregated in DP. Taken together our study shows the importance of using naturalistic emotional stimuli for a better understanding of developmental face deficits.

Body expressions of emotion do not trigger fear contagion in autism spectrum disorder

Although there is evidence of emotion perception deficits in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), research on this topic has been mostly confined to perception of emotions in faces. Using behavioral measures and 3T functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined whether such deficits extend to the perception of bodily expressed emotions. We found that individuals with ASD, in contrast to neurotypical (NT) individuals, did not exhibit a differential pattern of brain activation to bodies expressing fear as compared with emotionally neutral bodies. ASD and NT individuals showed similar patterns of activation in response to bodies engaged in emotionally neutral actions, with the exception of decreased activation in the inferior frontal cortex and the anterior insula in ASD. We discuss these findings in relation to possible abnormalities in a network of cortical and subcortical mechanisms involved in social orienting and emotion contagion. Our data suggest that emotion perception deficits in ASD may be due to compromised processing of the emotional component of observed actions.

Human and animal sounds influence recognition of body language.

In naturalistic settings emotional events have multiple correlates and are simultaneously perceived by several sensory systems. Recent studies have shown that recognition of facial expressions is biased towards the emotion expressed by a simultaneously presented emotional expression in the voice even if attention is directed to the face only. So far, no study examined whether this phenomenon also applies to whole body expressions, although there is no obvious reason why this crossmodal influence would be specific for faces. Here we investigated whether perception of emotions expressed in whole body movements is influenced by affective information provided by human and by animal vocalizations. Participants were instructed to attend to the action displayed by the body and to categorize the expressed emotion. The results indicate that recognition of body language is biased towards the emotion expressed by the simultaneously presented auditory information, whether it consist of human or of animal sounds. Our results show that a crossmodal influence from auditory to visual emotional information obtains for whole body video images with the facial expression blanked and includes human as well as animal sounds.