MEG demonstrates a supra-additive response to facial and vocal emotion in the right superior temporal sulcus
Abstract
An influential neural model of face perception suggests that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) is sensitive to those aspects of faces that produce transient visual changes, including facial expression. Other researchers note that recognition of expression involves multiple sensory modalities and suggest that the STS also may respond to crossmodal facial signals that change transiently. Indeed, many studies of audiovisual (AV) speech perception show STS involvement in AV speech integration. Here we examine whether these findings extend to AV emotion. We used magnetoencephalography to measure the neural responses of participants as they viewed and heard emotionally congruent fear and minimally congruent neutral face and voice stimuli. We demonstrate significant supra-additive responses (i.e., where AV > [unimodal auditory + unimodal visual]) in the posterior STS within the first 250 ms for emotionally congruent AV stimuli. These findings show a role for the STS in processing crossmodal emotive signals.
Additional Information
© 2009 National Academy of Sciences. Edited by Edward E. Smith, Columbia University, New York, NY, and approved September 23, 2009 (received for review June 2, 2009) A.J.C. is funded by the Medical Research Council (U.1055.02.001.00001.01). Author contributions: C.C.H., A.J.C., G.G.R.G., and A.W.Y. designed research; C.C.H. performed research; W.W., S.J., and G.G.R.G. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; C.C.H. and W.W. analyzed data; and C.C.H., W.W., A.J.C., and A.W.Y. wrote the paper. The authors declare no conflict of interest. This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0905792106/DCSupplemental.Attached Files
Published - 20010.full.pdf
Supplemental Material - 0905792106SI.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC2785283
- Eprint ID
- 101553
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20200225-135944293
- U.1055.02.001.00001.01)
- Medical Research Council (UK)
- Created
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2020-02-26Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field