Enhanced bodily states of fear facilitates bias perception of fearful faces

Abstract

We investigated whether enhanced interoceptive bodily states of fear would facilitate recognition of the fearful faces. Participants performed an emotional judgment task after a bodily imagery task inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. In the bodily imagery task, participants were instructed to imagine feeling the bodily sensations of two specific somatotopic patterns: a fear-associated bodily sensation (FBS) or a disgust-associated bodily sensation (DBS). They were shown faces expressing various levels of fearfulness and disgust and instructed to classify the facial expression as fear or disgust. We found a stronger bias favoring the “fearful face” under the congruent FBS condition than under the incongruent DBS condition. The brain response to fearful versus intermediate faces increased in the fronto-insular-temporal network under the FBS condition, but not the DBS condition. The fearful face elicited activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and extrastriate body area under the FBS condition relative to the DBS condition. Furthermore, functional connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex/extrastriate body area and the fronto-insular-temporal network was modulated according to the specific bodily sensation. Our findings suggest that somatotopic patterns of bodily sensation provide informative access to the collective visceral state in the fear processing via the fronto-insular-temporal network.

Impaired cardiac modulation in patients with functional seizures: Results from a face intensity judgment task

“…Correspondingly, individuals with better interoceptive accuracy are sensitive to the emotions of others 31 . Moreover, enhancement of interoceptive bodily states of fear may facilitate the recognition of the fearful faces 32 . Altered emotional processing is reported across functional neurological disorders (including FSs) (for a review, see Ref.…”

Enhanced Expectation of External Sensations of the Chest Regulates the Emotional Perception of Fearful Faces

“…However, this observation is in contrast with the previous finding that interoceptive inference around the chest area facilitated fear perception. In the previous study, interoceptive inferences regarding congruent bodily sensation patterns (an emphasis on sensations around the chest) enhanced the behavioral recognition of fearful faces and neural responses elicited by fearful faces [ 25 ]. This involvement of bodily sensations around the chest in the perception of fearful faces supported previous studies on the pivotal role of cardiac interoception in fear processing [ 1 , 16 ].…”

“…In our study, we found increased brain activities in sgACC, cuneus, and fusiform gyrus and decreased brain activities in the PAG and middle temporal cortex constituting the default mode network. It has been well known that the amygdala is the key brain region in the processing of emotional facial expression [ 25 ]. However, we were not able to find the change of brain activities in the amygdala in the current study.…”

“…In a two-alternative forced-choice task, the participants were instructed to classify emotional faces as either fearful or disgusted. The methods were described in part in our previous study [ 25 ]. The pseudo-electrical acupuncture stimulation was presented for six seconds after visual fixation on a cross on the center of the screen.…”

“…Using a bodily sensation map, we found that somatotopic patterns of bodily sensation were associated with the degree of interoceptive accuracy [ 23 ]. Our previous study showed that perceptual processing of fearful faces was facilitated by enhanced interoceptive sensations elicited by a bodily imagery task associated with fear [ 25 ].…”