Emotions promote social interaction by synchronizing brain activity across individuals

Abstract

Sharing others' emotional states may facilitate understanding their intentions and actions. Here we show that networks of brain areas "tick together" in participants who are viewing similar emotional events in a movie. Participants' brain activity was measured with functional MRI while they watched movies depicting unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant emotions. After scanning, participants watched the movies again and continuously rated their experience of pleasantness-unpleasantness (i.e., valence) and of arousal-calmness. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to derive multisubject voxelwise similarity measures [intersubject correlations (ISCs)] of functional MRI data. Valence and arousal time series were used to predict the moment-to-moment ISCs computed using a 17-s moving average. During movie viewing, participants' brain activity was synchronized in lower-and higher-order sensory areas and in corticolimbic emotion circuits. Negative valence was associated with increased ISC in the emotion-processing network (thalamus, ventral striatum, insula) and in the default-mode network (precuneus, temporoparietal junction, medial prefrontal cortex, posterior superior temporal sulcus). High arousal was associated with increased ISC in the somatosensory cortices and visual and dorsal attention networks comprising the visual cortex, bilateral intraparietal sulci, and frontal eye fields. Seed-voxel-based correlation analysis confirmed that these sets of regions constitute dissociable, functional networks. We propose that negative valence synchronizes individuals' brain areas supporting emotional sensations and understanding of another's actions, whereas high arousal directs individuals' attention to similar features of the environment. By enhancing the synchrony of brain activity across individuals, emotions may promote social interaction and facilitate interpersonal understanding.synchronization | feeling | empathy | somatosensation H uman emotions are highly contagious. Feelings of anger and hatred may spread rapidly throughout a peaceful protest demonstration and turn it into a violent riot, whereas intense feelings of excitement and joy can sweep promptly from players to spectators in an ever-so-important football final. It is well documented that observation of others in a particular emotional state rapidly and automatically triggers the corresponding behavioral and physiological representation of that emotional state in the observer (1-3). Neuroimaging studies also have revealed common neural activation for perception and experience of states such as pain (4-6), disgust (7), and pleasure (8). This automated mapping of others' emotional states in one's own body and brain has been proposed to support social interaction via contextual understanding: Sharing others' emotional states provides the observers with a somatosensory framework that facilitates understanding their intentions and actions and allows the observers to "tune in" or "sync" with other individuals (9-11).Recent evidence suggests that during social si...

Bodily maps of emotions

“…These results thus support models assuming that somatosensation (25,27) and embodiment (13,14) play critical roles in emotional processing. Unraveling the subjective bodily sensations associated with human emotions may help us to better understand mood disorders such as depression and anxiety, which are accompanied by altered emotional processing (30), ANS activity (31,32), and somatosensation (33).…”

“…Participants also recognized emotions related to mean BSMs of other subjects. Functional brain imaging has established that the primary somatosensory cortices are engaged during emotional perception and emotional contagion (25,26), and their damage (27) or inactivation by transcranial magnetic stimulation (28) impairs recognition of others' emotions. Consequently, emotional perception could involve automatic activation of the sensorimotor representations of the observed emotions, which would subsequently be used for affective evaluation of the actual sensory input (13,29).…”

Coalitions in theory and reality: a review of pertinent variables and processes

“…Even in the absence of complete synchrony, other forms of coordinated action (e.g., for humans emotional sharing, Nummenmaa et al, 2012; and participation in music and dance, Kirschner & Tomasello, 2010;PhillipsSilver et al, 2010) have been speculated to aid dyads in achieving similar emotional states and prosocial attitudes towards the humans with whom they share these activities. While non-humans do not seem to exhibit joint displays as elaborate as those seen in humans, there may be some parallels.…”

Data-driven approaches in the investigation of social perception

“…Conceptually, regionally selective synchronization of brain activity across individuals could be the elementary mechanism supporting mutual understanding of the social environment. Activity within individual people's brains indeed becomes increasingly synchronous in a regionally selective fashion when they feel similar, strong emotions [40] or assume similar psychological perspectives towards the events described in a movie [41,42].…”