Selective attention effects on early integration of social signals: Same timing, modulated neural sources

Abstract

Humans combine co-emitted social signals to predict other's immediate intentions and prepare an adapted response. However, little is known about whether attending to only one of co-emitted social signals impacts on its combination with other signals. Here, using electroencephalography, we address selective attention effects on early combination of social signals. We manipulated three visual cues: gaze direction, emotional expression, and pointing gesture, while participants performed either emotion or gaze direction judgments. Results showed that a temporal marker of social cues integration emerges 170 ms after the stimulus onset, even if the integration of the three visual cues was not required to perform the task, as only one feature at a time was task-relevant. Yet, in addition to common temporal regions, the relative contribution of specific neural sources of this integration changed as a function of the attended feature: integration during emotion judgments was mainly implemented in classical limbic areas but in the dorsal pathway during gaze direction judgments.Together, these findings demonstrate that co-emitted social cues are integrated as long as they are relevant to the observer, even when they are irrelevant to the ongoing task.

Attention modulations on the perception of social hierarchy at distinct temporal stages: An electrophysiological investigation

“…These findings are consistent with a tremendous of evidence that modulations of early neural responses by biological salient events (e.g., superior hierarchy) are evident in attention-limited environments (Carretié et al, 2004;El Zein et al, 2015;Olofsson et al, 2008). In accord with current findings, previous behavioral studies have demonstrated that high-status targets attract attentional bias in both attended and unattended contexts (Dalmaso et al, 2012;Foulsham et al, 2010).…”

Prioritized neural processing of social threats during perceptual decision-making

“…A growing body of literature concurs with evolutionary accounts by highlighting a functional and anatomical link between neural systems that sustain emotional appraisal and those that underlie action preparation (de Gelder, Snyder, Greve, Gerard, & Hadjikhani, 2004; Grèzes, Valabregue, Gholipour, & Chevallier, 2014; Pichon, de Gelder, & Grezes, 2012; Van den Stock, 2011). Moreover, and in agreement with the present results, the influence of emotion stimuli on motor-related areas was observed from 150ms to 300ms post-stimulus onset (Borgomaneri, Gazzola, & Avenanti, 2014; Conty et al, 2012; El Zein, Gamond, Conty, & Grèzes, 2015a; El Zein et al, 2015b; Hortensius, de Gelder, & Schutter, 2016). We therefore suggest that the early potentiation of premotor activity during emotion decisions is related to the behavioral relevance for the observer of the perceived threat rather than its sensory properties.…”

Sex differences in the development of emotion circuitry in adolescents at risk for substance abuse: a longitudinal fMRI study

“…However, it is likely that amygdala hyper-vigilance is involved, as previous studies have demonstrated that the amygdala can trigger and inhibit motor responses and/or modulate motor programs in emotionally specific contexts (LeDoux, 2000; Sagaspe et al , 2011). Additionally, El Zein et al (2015) demonstrated that healthy individuals with high anxiety show hyper-vigilance to potentially threatening stimuli by way of earlier electroencephalogram signals in the motor cortex compared to low anxiety individuals. Thus, it is possible that emotion processing in at-risk adolescent females influences both the amygdala and motor-related regions.…”