title: The Temporal Pole Top-Down Modulates the Ventral Visual Stream During Social Cognition.
abstract: The temporal pole (TP) has been associated with diverse functions of social cognition and emotion processing. Although the underlying mechanism remains elusive, one possibility is that TP acts as domain-general hub integrating socioemotional information. To test this, 26 participants were presented with 60 empathy-evoking film clips during fMRI scanning. The film clips were preceded by a linguistic sad or neutral context and half of the clips were accompanied by sad music. In line with its hypothesized role, TP was involved in the processing of sad context and furthermore tracked participants' empathic concern. To examine the neuromodulatory impact of TP, we applied nonlinear dynamic causal modeling to a multisensory integration network from previous work consisting of superior temporal gyrus (STG), fusiform gyrus (FG), and amygdala, which was extended by an additional node in the TP. Bayesian model comparison revealed a gating of STG and TP on fusiform-amygdalar coupling and an increase of TP to FG connectivity during the integration of contextual information. Moreover, these backward projections were strengthened by emotional music. The findings indicate that during social cognition, TP integrates information from different modalities and top-down modulates lower-level perceptual areas in the ventral visual stream as a function of integration demands.
authors.affiliation: Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion", 14195 Berlin, Germany.|Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany.|Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Corinna
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pehrs
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Jamil
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zaki
authors.affiliation: Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion", 14195 Berlin, Germany.|Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany.|Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Lorna H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Schlochtermeier
authors.affiliation: Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion", 14195 Berlin, Germany.|Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany.|Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Arthur M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Jacobs
authors.affiliation: Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion", 14195 Berlin, Germany.|Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany.|Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion, 14195 Berlin, Germany.|Department of Psychology, Experimental Psychology and Methods, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44801 Bochum, Germany.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kuchinke
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen, 5009 Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Koelsch
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology; D009146:Music; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D012938:Social Perception; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: dynamic causal modeling; emotion; empathy; fMRI; multisensory integration