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MEG demonstrates a supra-additive response to facial and vocal emotion in right superior temporal sulcus
Authors:
Hagan, C., Woods, W., Johnson,S., CALDER, A.J., Green, G.G.R., and Young, A.W.
Reference:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(47), 20010-20015
Year of publication:
2009
CBU number:
7048
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 expression recognition involves multiple sensory modalities and suggest that STS may also respond to crossmodal facial signals that transiently change. Indeed, many studies of audio-visual (AV) speech perception show STS involvement in AV speech integration. Here we examine if 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 report the first demonstration of significant supra-additive responses (i.e., where AV > [unimodal auditory (A) + unimodal visual (V)]) in posterior STS within the first 250ms for emotionally congruent AV stimuli. These findings demonstrate a role for STS in processing crossmodal emotive signals.
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