title: Dynamic Changes in Amygdala Psychophysiological Connectivity Reveal Distinct Neural Networks for Facial Expressions of Basic Emotions.
abstract: The quest to characterize the neural signature distinctive of different basic emotions has recently come under renewed scrutiny. Here we investigated whether facial expressions of different basic emotions modulate the functional connectivity of the amygdala with the rest of the brain. To this end, we presented seventeen healthy participants (8 females) with facial expressions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and emotional neutrality and analyzed amygdala's psychophysiological interaction (PPI). In fact, PPI can reveal how inter-regional amygdala communications change dynamically depending on perception of various emotional expressions to recruit different brain networks, compared to the functional interactions it entertains during perception of neutral expressions. We found that for each emotion the amygdala recruited a distinctive and spatially distributed set of structures to interact with. These changes in amygdala connectional patters characterize the dynamic signature prototypical of individual emotion processing, and seemingly represent a neural mechanism that serves to implement the distinctive influence that each emotion exerts on perceptual, cognitive, and motor responses. Besides these differences, all emotions enhanced amygdala functional integration with premotor cortices compared to neutral faces. The present findings thus concur to reconceptualise the structure-function relation between brain-emotion from the traditional one-to-one mapping toward a network-based and dynamic perspective.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, and CoRPS - Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic diseases - Tilburg University, Tilburg, 5000LE, The Netherlands.|Department of Psychology, University of Torino, via Po 14, Torino, 10123, Italy.
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Diano
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, and CoRPS - Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic diseases - Tilburg University, Tilburg, 5000LE, The Netherlands.|Department of Psychology, University of Torino, via Po 14, Torino, 10123, Italy.|Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, 9 South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tamietto
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, and CoRPS - Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic diseases - Tilburg University, Tilburg, 5000LE, The Netherlands.|Department of Psychology, University of Torino, via Po 14, Torino, 10123, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Celeghin
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, 9 South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Lawrence
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Weiskrantz
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Torino, via Po 14, Torino, 10123, Italy.|GCS-fMRI, Kolliker Hospital, Torino, 1100, Italy.
authors.forename: Mona-Karina
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Tatu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Torino, via Po 14, Torino, 10123, Italy.
authors.forename: Arianna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bagnis
authors.affiliation: GCS-fMRI, Kolliker Hospital, Torino, 1100, Italy.
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Duca
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Torino, via Po 14, Torino, 10123, Italy.|GCS-fMRI, Kolliker Hospital, Torino, 1100, Italy.
authors.forename: Giuliano
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Geminiani
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Torino, via Po 14, Torino, 10123, Italy.|GCS-fMRI, Kolliker Hospital, Torino, 1100, Italy.
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cauda
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Torino, via Po 14, Torino, 10123, Italy.|GCS-fMRI, Kolliker Hospital, Torino, 1100, Italy.
authors.forename: Tommaso
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Costa
mesh_terms: D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D055815:Young Adult