Cortical Systems for the Recognition of Emotion in Facial Expressions

摘要: This study is part of an effort to map neural systems involved in the processing emotion, and it focuses on possible cortical components process recognizing facial expressions. We hypothesized that most responsible for recognition emotional expressions would draw discrete regions right higher-order sensory cortices specific emotions depend partially distinct system subsets such regions. tested these hypotheses using lesion analysis 37 subjects with focal brain damage. Subjects were asked recognize six basic emotions: happiness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness. Data analyzed a novel technique, based three-dimensional reconstruction images, which anatomical description surface lesions task performance scores jointly mapped onto standard brain-space. found all recognized happy normally but some impaired negative emotions, especially fear The best correlated emotion inferior parietal cortex mesial anterior infracalcarine cortex. did not find impairments any restricted left hemisphere. These data provide evidence important involving visual somatosensory sectors