Dissimilar processing of emotional facial expressions in human and monkey temporal cortex.

ABSTRACT: Emotional facial expressions play an important role in social communication across primates. Despite major progress made in our understanding of categorical information processing such as for objects and faces, little is known, however, about how the primate brain evolved to process emotional cues. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the processing of emotional facial expressions between monkeys and humans. We used a 2×2×2 factorial design with species (human and monkey), expression (fear and chewing) and configuration (intact versus scrambled) as factors. At the whole brain level, neural responses to conspecific emotional expressions were anatomically confined to the superior temporal sulcus (STS) in humans. Within the human STS, we found functio

SUBMITTER: Zhu Q 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3625447 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature