Body language in the brain: constructing meaning from expressive movement

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Christine M TipperScott T Grafton

Abstract

This fMRI study investigated neural systems that interpret body language-the meaningful emotive expressions conveyed by body movement. Participants watched videos of performers engaged in modern dance or pantomime that conveyed specific themes such as hope, agony, lust, or exhaustion. We tested whether the meaning of an affectively laden performance was decoded in localized brain substrates as a distinct property of action separable from other superficial features, such as choreography, kinematics, performer, and low-level visual stimuli. A repetition suppression (RS) procedure was used to identify brain regions that decoded the meaningful affective state of a performer, as evidenced by decreased activity when emotive themes were repeated in successive performances. Because the theme was the only feature repeated across video clips that were otherwise entirely different, the occurrence of RS identified brain substrates that differentially coded the specific meaning of expressive performances. RS was observed bilaterally, extending anteriorly along middle and superior temporal gyri into temporal pole, medially into insula, rostrally into inferior orbitofrontal cortex, and caudally into hippocampus and amygdala. Behavioral data o...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jun 6, 2018·Frontiers in Human Neuroscience·Lisa Aziz-ZadehGiorgio Corcelli
Dec 14, 2018·Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews·Lavinia Teixeira-MachadoJair de Jesus Mari

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Software Mentioned

Statistical Parametric Mapping
IC
Psychtoolbox
Stata
Presentation
SPM
SPM5
Caret
Tracker
Pantomime

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