Emotion Modulation of the Body-Selective Areas in the Developing Brain

Abstract

Emotions are strongly conveyed by the human body and the ability to recognize emotions from body posture or movement is still developing through childhood and adolescence. To date, there are very few studies exploring how these behavioural observations are paralleled by functional brain development. Furthermore, there are currently no studies exploring the development of emotion modulation in these areas. In the current study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the brain activity of 25 children (age 6-11), 18 adolescents (age 12-17) and 26 adults while they passively viewed short videos of angry, happy or neutral body movements. We observed that when viewing bodies generally, adults showed higher activity than children bilaterally in the body-selective areas; namely the extra-striate body area (EBA), fusiform body area (FBA), posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and amygdala (AMY). Adults also showed higher activity than adolescents, but only in right hemisphere body-selective areas. Crucially, however, we found that there were no age differences in the emotion modulation of activity in these areas. These results indicate, for the first time, that despite activity selective to body perception increasing across childhood and adolescence, emotion modulation of these areas in adult-like from 7 years of age.

A computational neuroethology perspective on body and expression perception

“…expression representation in adults, adolescents, and children, we observed that right hemispheric activity in EBA, FBA, and STS increased across age. However, no difference in these areas and in the amygdalae was seen between age groups when contrasting angry or happy versus neutral body movements [24,110]. A difference in the developmental course of body-selective areas awaits elucidation from a developmental feature approach.…”

Removing Hand Form Information Specifically Impairs Emotion Recognition for Fearful and Angry Body Stimuli

“…We already know that several "basic" emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger) can be recognized from static and dynamic stimuli depicting body form and movement (Atkinson, Dittrich, Gemmell, & Young, 2004; de Gelder et al, 2010; de Gelder & Van den Stock, 2011; Gr ezes, Pichon, & de Gelder, 2007;Meijer, 1989;Ross, Polson, & Grosbras, 2012). Furthermore, as in face research, emotional body recognition has been shown to be context dependent (Kret & de Gelder, 2010), shows a protracted developmental trajectory (Boone & Cunningham, 1998;Lagerlof & Djerf, 2009;Ross et al, 2012) and has regions of visual cortex specialized for its recognition and interpretation (de Gelder, Snyder, Greve, Gerard, & Hadjikhani, 2004;Downing, Jiang, Shuman, & Kanwisher, 2001; Kret, Pichon, Gr ezes, & Peelen, Atkinson, Andersson, & Vuilleumier, 2007; de Gelder, Crabbe, & Grosbras, 2014, 2019.…”

“…This suggests that instead of referring to the "body-selective areas" of the visual cortex, the system might be more nuanced than the name implies. Indeed, studies that refer to the "body-selective areas" may be looking at areas of cortex selective to individual body components (e.g., hands, arms) rather than "the body" as a whole (Downing et al, 2001;Peelen & Downing, 2005;Ross et al, 2014Ross et al, , 2019.…”

Structural Alterations in Large-scale Brain Networks and Their Relationship with Sleep Disturbances in the Adolescent Population

“…While this application remains controversial 82 , several neuroimaging studies on developing brains have not only shown neuroanatomical differences between adults but also demonstrated valid neuroimaging results for children using the adult template 71,[83][84][85] . Moreover, the standard adult SPM template enables us to compare or combine the results of previous studies conducted in adults or across different age groups 72,86,87 .…”