title: Rapid neural discrimination of communicative gestures.
abstract: Humans are biased toward social interaction. Behaviorally, this bias is evident in the rapid effects that self-relevant communicative signals have on attention and perceptual systems. The processing of communicative cues recruits a wide network of brain regions, including mentalizing systems. Relatively less work, however, has examined the timing of the processing of self-relevant communicative cues. In the present study, we used multivariate pattern analysis (decoding) approach to the analysis of magnetoencephalography (MEG) to study the processing dynamics of social-communicative actions. Twenty-four participants viewed images of a woman performing actions that varied on a continuum of communicative factors including self-relevance (to the participant) and emotional valence, while their brain activity was recorded using MEG. Controlling for low-level visual factors, we found early discrimination of emotional valence (70 ms) and self-relevant communicative signals (100 ms). These data offer neural support for the robust and rapid effects of self-relevant communicative cues on behavior.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA, Perception in Action Research Centre & Department of Cognitive Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia, and Centre for Cognition & Its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia redcay@umd.edu.
authors: Elizabeth
authors: E
authors: Redcay
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA, Perception in Action Research Centre & Department of Cognitive Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia, and Centre for Cognition & Its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA, Perception in Action Research Centre & Department of Cognitive Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia, and Centre for Cognition & Its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors: Thomas A
authors: TA
authors: Carlson
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology; D009633:Nonverbal Communication / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: communicative cues; decoding; magnetoencephalography; multivariate pattern analysis; social cognition