title: The neural basis of perceiving person interactions.
abstract: This study examined whether the grouping of people into meaningful social scenes (e.g., two people having a chat) impacts the basic perceptual analysis of each partaking individual. To explore this issue, we measured neural activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants sex-categorized congruent as well as incongruent person dyads (i.e., two people interacting in a plausible or implausible manner). Incongruent person dyads elicited enhanced neural processing in several high-level visual areas dedicated to face and body encoding and in the posterior middle temporal gyrus compared to congruent person dyads. Incongruent and congruent person scenes were also successfully differentiated by a linear multivariate pattern classifier in the right fusiform body area and the left extrastriate body area. Finally, increases in the person scenes' meaningfulness as judged by independent observers was accompanied by enhanced activity in the bilateral posterior insula. These findings demonstrate that the processing of person scenes goes beyond a mere stimulus-bound encoding of their partaking agents, suggesting that changes in relations between agents affect their representation in category-selective regions of the visual cortex and beyond.
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, UK; Division of Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE. Electronic address: s.quadflieg@bristol.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Quadflieg
authors.affiliation: Psychological Sciences Research Institute and Institute of Neuroscience, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gentile
authors.affiliation: Psychological Sciences Research Institute and Institute of Neuroscience, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rossion
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D016014:Linear Models; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D012938:Social Perception; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Person perception; Social dyad; Social interaction; Social relation