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Wu YT, Baillet S, Lamontagne A. Brain mechanisms involved in the perception of emotional gait: A combined magnetoencephalography and virtual reality study. PLoS One 2024; 19:e0299103. [PMID: 38551903 PMCID: PMC10980214 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299103] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/07/2023] [Accepted: 02/05/2024] [Indexed: 04/01/2024] Open
Abstract
Brain processes associated with emotion perception from biological motion have been largely investigated using point-light displays that are devoid of pictorial information and not representative of everyday life. In this study, we investigated the brain signals evoked when perceiving emotions arising from body movements of virtual pedestrians walking in a community environment. Magnetoencephalography was used to record brain activation in 21 healthy young adults discriminating the emotional gaits (neutral, angry, happy) of virtual male/female pedestrians. Event-related responses in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), fusiform body area (FBA), extrastriate body area (EBA), amygdala (AMG), and lateral occipital cortex (Occ) were examined. Brain signals were characterized by an early positive peak (P1;∼200ms) and a late positive potential component (LPP) comprising of an early (400-600ms), middle (600-1000ms) and late phase (1000-1500ms). Generalized estimating equations revealed that P1 amplitude was unaffected by emotion and gender of pedestrians. LPP amplitude showed a significant emotion X phase interaction in all regions of interest, revealing i) an emotion-dependent modulation starting in pSTS and Occ, followed by AMG, FBA and EBA, and ii) generally enhanced responses for angry vs. other gait stimuli in the middle LPP phase. LPP also showed a gender X phase interaction in pSTS and Occ, as gender affected the time course of the response to emotional gait. Present findings show that brain activation within areas associated with biological motion, form, and emotion processing is modulated by emotional gait stimuli rendered by virtual simulations representative of everyday life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yu-Tzu Wu
- School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Feil and Oberfeld Research Centre, Jewish Rehabilitation Hospital–Centre Intégré de Santé et de Services Sociaux de Laval, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Greater Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
| | - Sylvain Baillet
- McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital–Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
| | - Anouk Lamontagne
- School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Feil and Oberfeld Research Centre, Jewish Rehabilitation Hospital–Centre Intégré de Santé et de Services Sociaux de Laval, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Greater Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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DeCouto BS, Smeeton NJ, Williams AM. Skill and experience impact neural activity during global and local biological motion processing. Neuropsychologia 2023; 191:108718. [PMID: 37939872 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108718] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/06/2023] [Revised: 09/15/2023] [Accepted: 10/28/2023] [Indexed: 11/10/2023]
Abstract
During biological motion perception, individuals with perceptual experience learn to use more global processing, simultaneously extracting information from multiple body segments. Less experienced observers may use more local processing of individual body segments. The parietal lobe (e.g., alpha and beta power) has been shown to be critical to global and local static stimulus perception. Therefore, in this paper, we examined how skill impacts motion processing by assessing behavioral and neural responses to degrading global or local motion information for soccer penalty kicks. Skilled (N = 21) and less skilled (N = 19) soccer players anticipated temporally occluded videos of penalty kicks under normal, blurred (degraded local information), or spatially occluded (hips-only; degraded global information) viewing conditions. EEG was used to measure parietal alpha and beta power. Skilled players outperformed less skilled players, albeit both skill groups were less accurate in the blurred and hips-only conditions. Skilled performers showed significant decreases in bilateral parietal beta power in the hips-only condition, suggesting a greater reliance on global motion information under normal viewing conditions. Additionally, the hips-only condition elicited significantly greater beta relative to alpha power (beta - alpha), lower beta power, and lower alpha power than the control condition for both skill groups, suggesting spatial occlusion elicited a shift towards more local processing. Our novel findings demonstrate that skill and experience impact how motion is processed.
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Affiliation(s)
- B S DeCouto
- Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, Human Health, Resilience & Performance, 40 South Alcaniz St. Pensacola, FL 32502, USA; University of Utah, College of Health, Department of Health & Kinesiology, 383 Colorow Drive, Suite 260, Salt Lake City, UT. 84112, USA.
| | - N J Smeeton
- University of Brighton, School of Sport and Health Sciences, Sport and Exercise Science and Sports Medicine Research and Enterprise Group, 1 Denton Road, Eastbourne BN22 7SR, Brighton, England, UK
| | - A M Williams
- Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, Human Health, Resilience & Performance, 40 South Alcaniz St. Pensacola, FL 32502, USA; University of Utah, College of Health, Department of Health & Kinesiology, 383 Colorow Drive, Suite 260, Salt Lake City, UT. 84112, USA
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Lee Masson H, Isik L. Rapid Processing of Observed Touch through Social Perceptual Brain Regions: An EEG-fMRI Fusion Study. J Neurosci 2023; 43:7700-7711. [PMID: 37871963 PMCID: PMC10634570 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0995-23.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2023] [Revised: 08/09/2023] [Accepted: 08/31/2023] [Indexed: 10/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Seeing social touch triggers a strong social-affective response that involves multiple brain networks, including visual, social perceptual, and somatosensory systems. Previous studies have identified the specific functional role of each system, but little is known about the speed and directionality of the information flow. Is this information extracted via the social perceptual system or from simulation from somatosensory cortex? To address this, we examined the spatiotemporal neural processing of observed touch. Twenty-one human participants (seven males) watched 500-ms video clips showing social and nonsocial touch during electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. Visual and social-affective features were rapidly extracted in the brain, beginning at 90 and 150 ms after video onset, respectively. Combining the EEG data with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from our prior study with the same stimuli reveals that neural information first arises in early visual cortex (EVC), then in the temporoparietal junction and posterior superior temporal sulcus (TPJ/pSTS), and finally in the somatosensory cortex. EVC and TPJ/pSTS uniquely explain EEG neural patterns, while somatosensory cortex does not contribute to EEG patterns alone, suggesting that social-affective information may flow from TPJ/pSTS to somatosensory cortex. Together, these findings show that social touch is processed quickly, within the timeframe of feedforward visual processes, and that the social-affective meaning of touch is first extracted by a social perceptual pathway. Such rapid processing of social touch may be vital to its effective use during social interaction.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Seeing physical contact between people evokes a strong social-emotional response. Previous research has identified the brain systems responsible for this response, but little is known about how quickly and in what direction the information flows. We demonstrated that the brain processes the social-emotional meaning of observed touch quickly, starting as early as 150 ms after the stimulus onset. By combining electroencephalogram (EEG) data with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, we show for the first time that the social-affective meaning of touch is first extracted by a social perceptual pathway and followed by the later involvement of somatosensory simulation. This rapid processing of touch through the social perceptual route may play a pivotal role in effective usage of touch in social communication and interaction.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haemy Lee Masson
- Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom
- Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218
| | - Leyla Isik
- Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218
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Troje NF, Chang DHF. Life Detection From Biological Motion. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2023; 32:26-32. [PMID: 36875153 PMCID: PMC9975895 DOI: 10.1177/09637214221128252] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/11/2023]
Abstract
Life motion, the active movements of people and other animals, contains a wealth of information that is potentially accessible to the visual system of an observer. Biological-motion point-light displays have been widely used to study both the information contained in life motion stimuli and the visual mechanisms that make use of it. Biological motion conveys motion-mediated dynamic shape, which in turn can be used for identification and recognition of the agent, but it also contains local visual invariants that humans and other animals use as a general detection system that signals the presence of other agents in the visual environment. Here, we review recent research on behavioral, neurophysiological, and genetic aspects of this life-detection system and discuss its functional significance in the light of earlier hypotheses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nikolaus F Troje
- Department of Biology & Centre for Vision Science, York University
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Cracco E, Oomen D, Papeo L, Wiersema JR. Using EEG movement tagging to isolate brain responses coupled to biological movements. Neuropsychologia 2022; 177:108395. [PMID: 36272677 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108395] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/25/2022] [Revised: 09/27/2022] [Accepted: 10/09/2022] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
Detecting biological motion is essential for adaptive social behavior. Previous research has revealed the brain processes underlying this ability. However, brain activity during biological motion perception captures a multitude of processes. As a result, it is often unclear which processes reflect movement processing and which processes reflect secondary processes that build on movement processing. To address this issue, we developed a new approach to measure brain responses directly coupled to observed movements. Specifically, we showed 30 male and female adults a point-light walker moving at a pace of 2.4 Hz and used EEG frequency tagging to measure the brain response coupled to that pace ('movement tagging'). The results revealed a reliable response at the walking frequency that was reduced by two manipulations known to disrupt biological motion perception: phase scrambling and inversion. Interestingly, we also identified a brain response at half the walking frequency (i.e., 1.2 Hz), corresponding to the rate at which the individual dots completed a cycle. In contrast to the 2.4 Hz response, the response at 1.2 Hz was increased for scrambled (vs. unscrambled) walkers. These results show that frequency tagging can be used to capture the visual processing of biological movements and can dissociate between global (2.4 Hz) and local (1.2 Hz) processes involved in biological motion perception, at different frequencies of the brain signal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emiel Cracco
- Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
| | - Danna Oomen
- Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
| | - Liuba Papeo
- Institut des Sciences Cognitives-Marc Jeannerod, UMR5229, Centre National de La Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) & Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 69675 Bron, France
| | - Jan R Wiersema
- Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
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Duarte JV, Abreu R, Castelo-Branco M. A two-stage framework for neural processing of biological motion. Neuroimage 2022; 259:119403. [PMID: 35738331 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119403] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/22/2022] [Revised: 05/18/2022] [Accepted: 06/19/2022] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
It remains to be understood how biological motion is hierarchically computed, from discrimination of local biological motion animacy to global dynamic body perception. Here, we addressed this functional separation of the correlates of the perception of local biological motion from perception of global motion of a body. We hypothesized that local biological motion processing can be isolated, by using a single dot motion perceptual decision paradigm featuring the biomechanical details of local realistic motion of a single joint. To ensure that we were indeed tackling processing of biological motion properties we used a discrimination instead of detection task. We discovered using representational similarity analysis that two key early dorsal and two ventral stream regions (visual motion selective hMT+ and V3A, extrastriate body area EBA and a region within fusiform gyrus FFG) showed robust and separable signals related to encoding of local biological motion and global motion-mediated shape. These signals reflected two independent processing stages, as revealed by representational similarity analysis and deconvolution of fMRI responses to each motion pattern. This study showed that higher level pSTS encodes both classes of biological motion in a similar way, revealing a higher-level integrative stage, reflecting scale independent biological motion perception. Our results reveal a two-stage framework for neural computation of biological motion, with an independent contribution of dorsal and ventral regions for the initial stage.
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Affiliation(s)
- João Valente Duarte
- Centre of Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal
| | - Rodolfo Abreu
- Centre of Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal
| | - Miguel Castelo-Branco
- Centre of Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal; Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal.
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Wang C, Zhou Y, Li C, Tian W, He Y, Fang P, Li Y, Yuan H, Li X, Li B, Luo X, Zhang Y, Liu X, Wu S. Working Memory Capacity of Biological Motion's Basic Unit: Decomposing Biological Motion From the Perspective of Systematic Anatomy. Front Psychol 2022; 13:830555. [PMID: 35391972 PMCID: PMC8980279 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.830555] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2021] [Accepted: 02/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Many studies have shown that about three biological motions (BMs) can be maintained in working memory. However, no study has yet analyzed the difficulties of experiment materials used, which partially affect the ecological validity of the experiment results. We use the perspective of system anatomy to decompose BM, and thoroughly explore the influencing factors of difficulties of BMs, including presentation duration, joints to execute motions, limbs to execute motions, type of articulation interference tasks, and number of joints and planes involved in the BM. We apply the change detection paradigm supplemented by the articulation interference task to measure the BM working memory capacity (WMC) of participants. Findings show the following: the shorter the presentation duration, the less participants remembered; the more their wrist moved, the less accurate their memory was; repeating verbs provided better results than did repeating numerals to suppress verbal encoding; the more complex the BM, the less participants remembered; and whether the action was executed by the handed limbs did not affect the WMC. These results indicate that there are many factors that can be used to adjust BM memory load. These factors can help sports psychology professionals to better evaluate the difficulty of BMs, and can also partially explain the differences in estimations of BM WMC in previous studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chaoxian Wang
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Yue Zhou
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Congchong Li
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Wenqing Tian
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Yang He
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Peng Fang
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Yijun Li
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Huiling Yuan
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Xiuxiu Li
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Technology, Xi'an, China
| | - Bin Li
- School of Information Technology, Northwest University, Xi'an, China
| | - Xuelin Luo
- School of Martial Arts, Xi'an Physical Education University, Xi'an, China
| | - Yun Zhang
- School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
| | - Xufeng Liu
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Shengjun Wu
- Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
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Hirai M, Hakuno Y. Electrophysiological evidence of global structure-from-motion processing of biological motion in 6-month-Old infants. Neuropsychologia 2022; 170:108229. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108229] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/27/2021] [Revised: 03/12/2022] [Accepted: 03/23/2022] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
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