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Brain circuits signaling the absence of emotion in body language.

ABSTRACT: Adaptive social behavior and mental well-being depend on not only recognizing emotional expressions but also, inferring the absence of emotion. While the neurobiology underwriting the perception of emotions is well studied, the mechanisms for detecting a lack of emotional content in social signals remain largely unknown. Here, using cutting-edge analyses of effective brain connectivity, we uncover the brain networks differentiating neutral and emotional body language. The data indicate greater activation of the right amygdala and midline cerebellar vermis to nonemotional as opposed to emotional body language. Most important, the effective connectivity between the amygdala and insula predicts people's ability to recognize the absence of emotion. These conclusions extend substantially current concepts of emotion perception by suggesting engagement of limbic effective connectivity in recognizing the lack of emotion in body language reading. Furthermore, the outcome may advance the understanding of overly emotional interpretation of social signals in depression or schizophrenia by providing the missing link between body language reading and limbic pathways. The study thus opens an avenue for multidisciplinary research on social cognition and the underlying cerebrocerebellar networks, ranging from animal models to patients with neuropsychiatric conditions.

SUBMITTER: Sokolov AA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7456113 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Brain circuits signaling the absence of emotion in body language.

Sokolov Arseny A AA Zeidman Peter P Erb Michael M Pollick Frank E FE Fallgatter Andreas J AJ Ryvlin Philippe P Friston Karl J KJ Pavlova Marina A MA

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20200806 34

Adaptive social behavior and mental well-being depend on not only recognizing emotional expressions but also, inferring the absence of emotion. While the neurobiology underwriting the perception of emotions is well studied, the mechanisms for detecting a lack of emotional content in social signals remain largely unknown. Here, using cutting-edge analyses of effective brain connectivity, we uncover the brain networks differentiating neutral and emotional body language. The data indicate greater a ...[more]

PMID: 32764147

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Project description:Emotions are signaled by complex arrays of face and body actions. The main point of contention in contemporary treatments is whether these arrays are discrete, holistic constellations reflecting emotion categories, or whether they are compositional-comprised of smaller components, each of which contributes some aspect of emotion to the complex whole. We address this question by investigating spontaneous face and body displays of athletes and place it in the wider context of human communicative signals and, in particular, of language. A defining property of human language is compositionality-the ability to combine and recombine a relatively small number of elements to create a vast number of complex meaningful expressions, and to interpret them. We ask whether this property of language can be discerned in a more ancient communicative system: intense emotional displays. In an experiment, participants interpreted a range of emotions and their strengths in pictures of athletes who had just won or lost a competition. By matching participants' judgements with minutely coded features of face and body, we find evidence for compositionality. The distribution of participants' responses indicates that most of the athletes' face and body features contribute to displays of dominance or submission. More particular emotional components related, for example, to positive valence (e.g. happy) or goal obstruction (e.g. frustrated), were also found to significantly correlate with certain face and body features. We propose that the combination of features linked to broader components (i.e, dominant or submissive) and to more particular emotions (e.g, happy or frustrated) reflects more complex emotional states. In sum, we find that the corporeal expression of intense, unfiltered emotion has compositional properties, potentially providing an ancient scaffolding upon which, millions of years later, the abstract and constrained compositional system of human language could build.

Project description:Ulotaront, a trace amine-associated receptor 1 (TAAR1) and serotonin 5-HT1A receptor agonist without antagonist activity at dopamine D2 or the serotonin 5-HT2A receptors, has demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of schizophrenia. Here we report the phase 1 translational studies that profiled the effect of ulotaront on brain responses to reward, working memory, and resting state connectivity (RSC) in individuals with low or high schizotypy (LS or HS). Participants were randomized to placebo (n = 32), ulotaront (50 mg; n = 30), or the D2 receptor antagonist amisulpride (400 mg; n = 34) 2 h prior to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses to task performance. Ulotaront increased subjective drowsiness, but reaction times were impaired by less than 10% and did not correlate with BOLD responses. In the Monetary Incentive Delay task (reward processing), ulotaront significantly modulated striatal responses to incentive cues, induced medial orbitofrontal responses, and prevented insula activation seen in HS subjects. In the N-Back working memory task, ulotaront modulated BOLD signals in brain regions associated with cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. Ulotaront did not show antidepressant-like biases in an emotion processing task. HS had significantly reduced connectivity in default, salience, and executive networks compared to LS participants and both drugs reduced this difference. Although performance impairment may have weakened or contributed to the fMRI findings, the profile of ulotaront on BOLD activations elicited by reward, memory, and resting state is compatible with an indirect modulation of dopaminergic function as indicated by preclinical studies. This phase 1 study supported the subsequent clinical proof of concept trial in people with schizophrenia.Clinical trial registration: Registry# and URL: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01972711, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01972711.

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Brain circuits signaling the absence of emotion in body language.

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Brain circuits signaling the absence of emotion in body language.

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