Association of trait emotional intelligence and individual fMRI-activation patterns during the perception of social signals from voice and face

• Published in: Human brain mapping Vol. 31; no. 7; pp. 979 - 991
• Main Authors: Kreifelts, Benjamin, Ethofer, Thomas, Huberle, Elisabeth, Grodd, Wolfgang, Wildgruber, Dirk
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company 01.07.2010; Wiley-Liss
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation; Adult; Auditory Perception - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain - blood supply; Brain - physiology; Brain Mapping; Cerebrovascular Circulation; crossmodal integration; Electrodiagnosis. Electric activity recording; Emotional Intelligence - physiology; Emotions; Facial Expression; Female; Humans; Investigative techniques, diagnostic techniques (general aspects); Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Medical sciences; Miscellaneous. Technology; Nervous system; Neural Pathways - physiology; Neuropsychological Tests; Photic Stimulation; prosody; Radiodiagnosis. Nmr imagery. Nmr spectrometry; social cognition; Social Perception; STS; Temporal Lobe - physiology; Visual Perception - physiology; Voice; Integration; Nervous system diseases; Intelligence; Radiodiagnosis; social cognition; Cognition; Crossmodal interaction; Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; crossmodal integration; Prosody; STS; Perception; Face; Voice; Facial expression
• ISSN: 1065-9471; 1097-0193; 1097-0193
• DOI: 10.1002/hbm.20913

Multimodal integration of nonverbal social signals is essential for successful social interaction. Previous studies have implicated the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in the perception of social signals such as nonverbal emotional signals as well as in social cognitive functions like mentalizing/theory of mind. In the present study, we evaluated the relationships between trait emotional intelligence (EI) and fMRI activation patterns in individual subjects during the multimodal perception of nonverbal emotional signals from voice and face. Trait EI was linked to hemodynamic responses in the right pSTS, an area which also exhibits a distinct sensitivity to human voices and faces. Within all other regions known to subserve the perceptual audiovisual integration of human social signals (i.e., amygdala, fusiform gyrus, thalamus), no such linked responses were observed. This functional difference in the network for the audiovisual perception of human social signals indicates a specific contribution of the pSTS as a possible interface between the perception of social information and social cognition. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.