Early Preferential Responses to Fear Stimuli in Human Right Dorsal Visual Stream - A Meg Study

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 6; no. 1; p. 24831
• Main Authors: Meeren, Hanneke K. M., Hadjikhani, Nouchine, Ahlfors, Seppo P., Hämäläinen, Matti S., de Gelder, Beatrice
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 20.04.2016; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/378/1457; 631/378/2613; Adult; analysis; Attention; coordinate system; cortex; Cortex (parietal); cortical surface; emotional body language; Emotions; Evoked Potentials, Visual; expressions; Fear; Female; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; inferior parietal lobule; Insect Proteins; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Magnetoencephalography; Male; multidisciplinary; Neurosciences; Neurovetenskaper; Parietal Lobe - physiology; perception; Photic Stimulation; rapid detection; Rod Opsins; Science; Sensors; surface-based; Transcranial magnetic stimulation; Visual cortex; Visual discrimination; Visual perception; whole-body; Young Adult
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep24831

Emotional expressions of others are salient biological stimuli that automatically capture attention and prepare us for action. We investigated the early cortical dynamics of automatic visual discrimination of fearful body expressions by monitoring cortical activity using magnetoencephalography. We show that right parietal cortex distinguishes between fearful and neutral bodies as early as 80-ms after stimulus onset, providing the first evidence for a fast emotion-attention-action link through human dorsal visual stream.