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Somatosensory cortex (SCx) has been shown to crucially contribute to early perceptual processes when judging other’s facial emotion expressions. Here, we investigated the specificity of SCx activity to angry, happy, sad and neutral emotions and the role of personality factors. We assessed participants’ alexithymia (TAS-20) and depression (BDI) levels, their cardioceptive abilities and recorded changes in neural activity in a facial emotion judgment task. During the task, we presented tactile probes to reveal neural activity in SCx which was then isolated from visual carry-over responses. To obtain pure SCx emotion effects, SCx activity elicited by neutral emotion expressions was subtracted from angry, happy, and sad expressions. We show distinct modulations of SCx activity to angry and happy expressions. Moreover, the SCx anger response was predicted by individual differences in trait alexithymia. Thus, emotion expressions of others are uniquely presented in the observer’s neural body representation and are shaped by their personality trait.

The concept of embodiment has been used in multiple scenarios, but in cognitive neuroscience it normally refers to the comprehension of the role of one’s own body in the cognition of everyday situations and the processes involved in that perception. Multisensory research is gradually embracing the concept of embodiment, but the focus has mostly been concentrated upon audiovisual integration. In two experiments, we evaluated how the likelihood of a perceived stimulus to be embodied modulates visuotactile interaction in a Simultaneity Judgement task. Experiment 1 compared the perception of two visual stimuli with and without biological attributes (hands and geometrical shapes) moving towards each other, while tactile stimuli were provided on the palm of the participants’ hand. Participants judged whether the meeting point of two periodically-moving visual stimuli was synchronous with the tactile stimulation in their own hands. Results showed that in the hand condition, the Point of Subjective Simultaneity (PSS) was significantly more distant to real synchrony (60 ms after the Stimulus Onset Asynchrony, SOA) than in the geometrical shape condition (45 ms after SOA). In experiment 2, we further explored the impact of biological attributes by comparing performance on two visual biological stimuli (hands and ears), that also vary in their motor and visuotactile properties. Results showed that the PSS was equally distant to real synchrony in both the hands and ears conditions. Overall, findings suggest that embodied visual biological stimuli may modulate visual and tactile multisensory interaction in simultaneity judgements.

The ability to experience others' emotional states is a key component in social interactions. Uniquely among sensorimotor regions, the somatosensory cortex (SCx) plays an especially important role in human emotion understanding. While distinct emotions are experienced in specific parts of the body, it remains unknown whether the SCx exhibits somatotopic activations to different emotional expressions. In the current study, we investigated if the affective response triggered by observing others' emotional face expressions leads to differential activations in SCx. Participants performed a visual facial emotion discrimination task while we measured changes in SCx topographic EEG activity by tactually stimulating two body-parts representative of the upper and lower limbs, the finger and the toe respectively. The results of the study showed an emotion specific response in the finger SCx when observing angry as opposed to sad emotional expressions, after controlling for carry-over effects of visual evoked activity. This dissociation to observed emotions was not present in toe somatosensory responses. Our results suggest that somatotopic activations of the SCx to discrete emotions might play a crucial role in understanding others' emotions.

Examining the processing of others' body-related information in the perceivers' brain across the neurotypical and clinical population is a key topic in the domain of cognitive neurosciences. We argue that beyond classical neuroimaging techniques and frequency analyses, methods that can be easily adapted to capture the fast processing of body-related information in the brain are needed. Here we introduce a novel method that allows this by measuring event-related potentials recorded with electroencephalography (ERPs-EEG). This method possesses known EEG advantages (low cost, high temporal resolution, established paradigms) plus an improvement of its main limitation; i.e., spatiotemporally smoothed resolution due to mixed neural sources. This occurs when participants are presented and process images of bodies/actions that recruit posterior visual cortices. Such stimulus-evoked activity may spread and mask the recording of simultaneous activity arising from sensorimotor brain areas, which also process body-related information. Therefore, it is difficult to dissociate the contributing role of different brain regions. To overcome this, we propose eliciting a combination of somatosensory, motor, and visual-evoked potentials during processing of body-related information (vs non-body-related). Next, brain activity from sensorimotor and visual systems can be dissociated by subtracting activity from trials containing only visual-evoked potentials to those trials containing either a mixture of visual and somatosensory or visual and motor-cortical potentials. This allows isolating visually driven neural activity in areas other than visual. To introduce this method, we revise recent work using this method, consider the processing of body-related stimuli in the brain, as well as outline key methodological aspects to-be-considered. This work provides a clear guideline to researchers interested or transitioning from behavioural to ERPs studies, offering the possibility to adapt well-established paradigms in the EEG realm to study others' body-related processing in the perceiver's own cortical body representation (e.g., examining classical EEG components in the social and embodiment frameworks)., This work was supported by City University London PhD scholarship (A.G-P), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO; RYC-2008-03090 and PSI2012-34558 to B.C-M), EPS (Experimental Psychology Society to Arslanova. I; who supported developing the above methods).

Dance has become a topic of increasing interest for empirical research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology. The study reviewed in this chapter aimed to reach a multifaceted community of scholars and practitioners interested in the blending between neuroscience and dance as an art form. It includes a revision on dancers’ physical expertise and skilled motor execution, studies on dancers’ timing and online synchronization abilities, and learning and memory processes, as well as a consideration of expert dancers as skilled dance observers. Following the authors’ comment on the article, they acknowledge major developments since its publication, in particular regarding recent lines of research on emotional components of dance, creativity, aesthetic perception, improvisation, entrainment, empathy, and well-being. Finally, the authors emphasize the impact of empirical research in dance beyond cognitive neuroscience and psychology and consider the potential of multidisciplinary expert teams that include the performing arts community to contribute to discourses in the arts and the sciences.

The article reviewed in this chapter discusses how questions initially originated in cognitive neuroscience can be answered with collaborations with nonscientific disciplines, such as performing arts. The author describes the first study that showed dancer’s brain activity when observing dance movements. By investigating how the expert brain works, they demonstrated the important role of sensorimotor processing for movement perception, emotion perception, and aesthetic judgment. This work opened a channel of communication between neuroscientists and performing artists, enabling conversations that have generated novel questions of interest to both disciplines. The chapter discusses three fundamental insights: the importance of prior experience for perception, the importance of motor representations for perception, and the existence of a system for embodied aesthetics. Finally, the author provides some consideration on neuroscientists’ capacity to dissect the aesthetic experience and how this knowledge can be absorbed by the performing artist during the artistic and choreographic process.

How does the brain see and experience dance? Performing arts have captured the attention of empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. In this chapter, the author reviews studies from cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology that have contributed to our understanding of the brain mechanisms for dance perception. The author introduces the concept of sensorimotor aesthetics, the process whereby the observer evokes an internal simulation of the perceived action of a dance performance, during its emotional and aesthetic experience. The author proposes an embodied aesthetics framework, in which the perception of the dancer’s body, the dance movement, and the expressed emotion are significantly influenced by an observer’s prior experience. Finally, the author discusses potential avenues for enhancing interactions between the science and artistic communities in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the aesthetics of dance.

Quattrocki and Friston (2014) argued that abnormalities in interoception—the process of representing one’s internal physiological states—could lie at the heart of autism, because of the critical role interoception plays in the ontogeny of social-affective processes. This proposal drew criticism from proponents of the alexithymia hypothesis, who argue that social-affective and underlying interoceptive impairments are not a feature of autism per se, but of alexithymia (a condition characterized by difficulties describing and identifying one’s own emotions), which commonly co-occurs with autism. Despite the importance of this debate for our understanding of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and of the role of interoceptive impairments in psychopathology, more generally, direct empirical evidence is scarce and inconsistent. Experiment 1 examined in a sample of 137 neurotypical (NT) individuals the association among autistic traits, alexithymia, and interoceptive accuracy (IA) on a standard heartbeat-tracking measure of IA. In Experiment 2, IA was assessed in 46 adults with ASD (27 of whom had clinically significant alexithymia) and 48 NT adults. Experiment 1 confirmed strong associations between autistic traits and alexithymia, but yielded no evidence to suggest that either was associated with interoceptive difficulties. Similarly, Experiment 2 provided no evidence for interoceptive impairments in autistic adults, irrespective of any co-occurring alexithymia. Bayesian analyses consistently supported the null hypothesis. The observations pose a significant challenge to notions that interoceptive impairments constitute a core feature of either ASD or alexithymia, at least as far as the direct perception of interoceptive signals is concerned., General Scientific Summary This article suggests that impairments in interoception—the process of representing one’s internal physiological states—do not lie at the heart of either autism or alexithymia.

Examining the processing of others’ body-related information in the perceivers’ brain (action observation) is a key topic in cognitive neuroscience. However, what happens beyond the perceptual stage, when the body is not within view and it is transformed into an associative form that can be stored, updated, and later recalled, remains poorly understood. Here we examine neurobehavioural evidence on the memory processing of visually perceived bodily stimuli (dynamic actions and images of bodies). The reviewed studies indicate that encoding and maintaining bodily stimuli in memory recruits the sensorimotor system. This process arises when bodily stimuli are either recalled through action recognition or reproduction. Interestingly, the memory capacity for these stimuli is rather limited: only 2 or 3 bodily stimuli can be simultaneously held in memory. Moreover, this process is disrupted by increasing concurrent bodily operations; i.e., moving one’s body, seeing or memorising additional bodies. Overall, the evidence suggests that the neural circuitry allowing us to move and feel ourselves supports the encoding, retention, and memory recall of others’ visually perceived bodies.

Attention allows us to select relevant information by modulating neural activity within sensory brain areas processing that information. Previous research has shown that visual perception of body stimuli recruits visual cortices together with observer's body representation in somatosensory cortex, which is known for processing body-related information (e.g., haptics, kinematics). However, whether attentional selection of visual body stimuli involves just visual or additional somatosensory areas remains elusive. Here we elicited visual and somatosensory evoked activity during a visual search task, whereby participants searched for target hand images defined by either visual (colour) or bodily (posture) features. In line with previous studies, we found electrophysiological evidence for attentional selection over visual areas (i.e., N2pc) regardless of the feature type. Importantly, after dissociating somatosensory from visual evoked activity, we show that only attentional selection of hand posture - but not hand colour - elicits modulation of somatosensory evoked electrocortical activity over somatosensory cortex. This suggests that attention may not only modulate cortical activity associated with the input-sensory modality (in this case, visual), but, depending on the type of attended information, it may also modulate cortical activity associated with another task-relevant sensory modality (in this case, somatosensory). Overall, our results provide evidence for a flexible attention mechanism that operates according to specific behavioural goals and the information embedded in the percept.

The study of human movement and action has become a topic of increasing relevance over the last decade, bringing dance into the focus of the cognitive sciences. The Neurocognition of Dance brings together contributors from the worlds of psychology and dance, and discusses the relationship between dance and perception. Fully updated throughout, this edition introduces scientific perspectives on human movement, before dance professionals considering how their creative work relates to cognition and learning. Finally, researchers with personal links to the dance world demonstrate how neurocognitive methods are applied to studying different aspects related to dance.

The art of dance involves body movement as a way of expression. There are several elements or strands in a dance performance worth considering before elaborating this chapter. First, a dance performance typically involves several elements, including, but not limited to, narrative, costumes, music, or lighting. These may vary among different dance styles, cultures and societies. However, there is a core element (that may vary extensively in its form) that is shared among all dance styles: the movement. Second, these movements are performed by an agent that often requires specific motor and mental training in order to execute these movements with precision and fluency: the dancer. Third, dance is the process or product of deliberately arranging these elements (movements, dancers, scenario, and music) in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions of the audience, and is thus strongly connected to an aesthetic experience. Finally, the aesthetic experience is often the result of participation by an observer in a performance setting. These four elements: movement, dancer, observer and aesthetic experience, are discussed in the present chapter in the context of cognitive neuroscience.

Recent studies suggest that brain regions engaged in perception are also recruited during the consolidation interval of the percept in working memory (WM). Evidence for this comes from studies showing that maintaining arbitrary visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli in WM elicits recruitment of the corresponding sensory cortices. Here we investigate if encoding and WM maintenance of visually perceived body-related stimuli engage just visual regions, or additional sensorimotor regions that are classically associated with embodiment processes in studies of body and action perception. We developed a novel WM paradigm in which participants were asked to remember body and control non-body-related images. In half of the trials, visual-evoked activity that was time-locked to the sight of the stimuli allowed us to examine visual processing of the stimuli to-be-remembered (visual-only trials). In the other half of the trials we additionally elicited a task irrelevant key pressing during the consolidation interval of the stimuli in WM. This manipulation elicited motor-cortical potentials (MCPs) concomitant to visual processing (visual-motor trials). This design allowed us to dissociate motor activity depicted in the MCPs from concurrent visual processing by subtracting activity from the visual-only trials to the compound activity found in the visual-motor trials. After dissociating the MCPs from concomitant visual activity, the results show that only the body-related images elicited neural recruitment of sensorimotor regions over and above visual effects. Importantly, the number of body stimuli to-be-remembered (memory load) modulated this later motor cortical activity. The current observations link together research in embodiment and WM by suggesting that neural recruitment is driven by the nature of the information embedded in the percept.

Working memory (WM) supports temporary maintenance of task-relevant information. This process is associated with persistent activity in the sensory cortex processing the information (e.g., visual stimuli activate visual cortex). However, we argue here that more multifaceted stimuli moderate this sensory-locked activity and recruit distinctive cortices. Specifically, perception of bodies recruits somatosensory cortex (SCx) beyond early visual areas (suggesting embodiment processes). Here we explore persistent activation in processing areas beyond the sensory cortex initially relevant to the modality of the stimuli. Using visual and somatosensory evoked-potentials in a visual WM task, we isolated different levels of visual and somatosensory involvement during encoding of body and non-body-related images. Persistent activity increased in SCx only when maintaining body images in WM, whereas visual/posterior regions' activity increased significantly when maintaining non-body images. Our results bridge WM and embodiment frameworks, supporting a dynamic WM process where the nature of the information summons specific processing resources, This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (RYC-2008-03090 to BC-M; PSI2012-34558 to BC-M and AC; PSI2014-54853 to AC), and City University London PhD scholarship (AG-P).

Memory functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in the encoding of relational but not item information and difficulties in the recollection of contextually rich episodic memories but not in the retrieval of relatively context-free memories through processes of familiarity. The neural underpinnings of this profile and the extent to which encoding difficulties contribute to retrieval difficulties in ASD remain unclear. Using a paradigm developed by Addis and McAndrews [2006; Neuroimage, 33, 1194-1206] we asked adults with and without a diagnosis of ASD to study word-triplets during functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanning that varied in the number of category relations amongst component words. Performance at test confirmed attenuated recollection in the context of preserved familiarity based retrieval in ASD. The results also showed that recollection but not familiarity based retrieval increases as a function of category relations in word triads for both groups, indicating a close link between the encoding of relational information and recollection. This link was further supported by the imaging results, where blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal responses in overlapping regions of the inferior prefrontal cortex were sensitive to the relational encoding manipulation as well as the contrast between recollection versus familiarity based retrieval. Interestingly, however, there was no evidence of prefrontal signal differentiation for this latter contrast in the ASD group for whom signal changes in a left hippocampal region were also marginally attenuated. Together, these observations suggest that attenuated levels of episodic recollection in ASD are, at least in part, attributable to anomalies in relational encoding processes.

Dance-like actions are complex visual stimuli involving multiple changes in body posture across time and space. Visual perception research has demonstrated a difference between the processing of dynamic body movement and the processing of static body posture. Yet, it is unclear whether this processing dissociation continues during the retention of body movement and body form in visual working memory (VWM). When observing a dance-like action, it is likely that static snapshot images of body posture will be retained alongside dynamic images of the complete motion. Therefore, we hypothesized that, as in perception, posture and movement would differ in VWM. Additionally, if body posture and body movement are separable in VWM, as form- and motion-based items, respectively, then differential interference from intervening form and motion tasks should occur during recognition. In two experiments, we examined these hypotheses. In Experiment 1, the recognition of postures and movements was tested in conditions in which the formats of the study and test stimuli matched (movement-study to movement-test, posture-study to posture-test) or mismatched (movement-study to posture-test, posture-study to movement-test). In Experiment 2, the recognition of postures and movements was compared after intervening form and motion tasks. These results indicated that (1) the recognition of body movement based only on posture is possible, but it is significantly poorer than recognition based on the entire movement stimulus, and (2) form-based interference does not impair memory for movements, although motion-based interference does. We concluded that, whereas static posture information is encoded during the observation of dance-like actions, body movement and body posture differ in VWM.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the possibilities that research on dance appreciation offers empirical aesthetics, as well as the challenges it poses. Behavioral and neuroimaging approaches have, to date, mainly focused on the perception and recognition of human body movement and structure. A small number of studies, nonetheless, have explicitly taken the basic research on the perceptual, emotional and cognitive processes engaged during movement observation, together with their neural concomitants, as a starting point to understand the aesthetic experience triggered by the observation of a dance. We provide an overview of these studies and, thereafter, point out avenues for future research on dance appreciation within the scope of empirical aesthetics. We also note some methodological and conceptual issues that should be taken into account in the design of empirical studies of the aesthetic appreciation of dance, including dance theory scholarship and humanistic approaches to dance practice. Finally, we describe how common movement features of dance styles around the world suggest that humans may be endowed with an evolved cognitive ability to appreciate and to be aesthetically moved by dance.

International audience; The human brain contains specialized circuits for observing and understanding actions. Previous studies have not distinguished whether this "mirror system" uses specialized motor representations or general processes of visual inference and knowledge to understand observed actions. We report the first neuroimaging study to distinguish between these alternatives. Purely motoric influences on perception have been shown behaviorally, but their neural bases are unknown. We used fMRI to reveal the neural bases of motor influences on action observation. We controlled for visual and knowledge effects by studying expert dancers. Some ballet moves are performed by only one gender. However, male and female dancers train together and have equal visual familiarity with all moves. Male and female dancers viewed videos of gender-specific male and female ballet moves. We found greater premotor, parietal, and cerebellar activity when dancers viewed moves from their own motor repertoire, compared to opposite-gender moves that they frequently saw but did not perform. Our results show that mirror circuits have a purely motor response over and above visual representations of action. We understand actions not only by visual recognition, but also motorically. In addition, we confirm that the cerebellum is part of the action observation network.

The present study shows how motor expertise increases individuals' sensitivity to others' affective body movement. This enhanced sensitivity is evident in the experts' behavior and physiology. Nineteen affective movement experts (professional ballet dancers) and 24 controls watched 96 video clips of emotionally expressive body movements while they performed an affect rating task (subjective response), and their galvanic skin response was recorded (physiological response). The movements in the clips were either sad or happy, and in half of the trials, movements were played in the order in which they are learned (forward presentation), and in the other half, movements were played backward (control condition). Results showed that motor expertise in affective body movement specifically modulated both behavioral and physiological sensitivity to others' affective body movement, and that this sensitivity is particularly strong when movements are shown in the way they are learnt (forward presentation). The evidence is discussed within current theories of proprioceptive arousal feedback and motor simulation accounts. (PsycINFO Database Record

Dance is a rich source of material for researchers interested in the integration of movement and cognition. The multiple aspects of embodied cognition involved in performing and perceiving dance have inspired scientists to use dance as a means for studying motor control, expertise, and action-perception links. The aim of this review is to present basic research on cognitive and neural processes implicated in the execution, expression, and observation of dance, and to bring into relief contemporary issues and open research questions. The review addresses six topics: 1) dancers' exemplary motor control, in terms of postural control, equilibrium maintenance, and stabilization; 2) how dancers' timing and on-line synchronization are influenced by attention demands and motor experience; 3) the critical roles played by sequence learning and memory; 4) how dancers make strategic use of visual and motor imagery; 5) the insights into the neural coupling between action and perception yielded through exploration of the brain architecture mediating dance observation; and 6) a neuroesthetics perspective that sheds new light on the way audiences perceive and evaluate dance expression. Current and emerging issues are presented regarding future directions that will facilitate the ongoing dialog between science and dance. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Visual recognition of human bodies is more difficult for upside down than upright presentations. This body inversion effect implies that body perception relies on configural rather than local processing. Although neuroimaging studies indicate that the visual processing of human bodies engages a large fronto-temporo-parietal network, information about the neural underpinnings of configural body processing is meager. Here, we used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to study the causal role of premotor, visual, and parietal areas in configural processing of human bodies. Eighteen participants performed a delayed matching-to-sample task with upright or inverted static body postures. Event-related, dual-pulse rTMS was applied 150 ms after the sample stimulus onset, over left ventral premotor cortex (vPMc), right extrastriate body area (EBA), and right superior parietal lobe (SPL) and, as a control site, over the right primary visual cortex (V1). Interfering stimulation of vPMc significantly reduced accuracy of matching judgments for upright bodies. In contrast, EBA rTMS significantly reduced accuracy for inverted but not for upright bodies. Furthermore, a significant body inversion effect was observed after interfering stimulation of EBA and V1 but not of vPMc and SPL. These results demonstrate an active contribution of the fronto-parietal mirror network to configural processing of bodies and suggest a novel, embodied aspect of visual perception. In contrast, the local processing of the body, possibly based on the form of individual body parts instead of on the whole body unit, appears to depend on EBA. Therefore, we propose two distinct cortical routes for the visual processing of human bodies.

Current models of emotion simulation propose that intentionally posing a facial expression can change one's subjective feelings, which in turn influences the processing of visual input. However, the underlying neural mechanism whereby one's facial emotion modulates the visual cortical responses to other's facial expressions remains unknown. To understand how one's facial expression affects visual processing, we measured participants' visual evoked potentials (VEPs) during a facial emotion judgment task of positive and neutral faces. To control for the effects of facial muscles on VEPs, we asked participants to smile (adopting an expression of happiness), to purse their lips (incompatible with smiling) or to pose with a neutral face, in separate blocks. Results showed that the smiling expression modulates face-specific visual processing components (N170/vertex positive potential) to watching other facial expressions. Specifically, when making a happy expression, neutral faces are processed similarly to happy faces. When making a neutral expression or pursing the lips, however, responses to neutral and happy face are significantly different. This effect was source localized within multisensory associative areas, angular gyrus, associative visual cortex and somatosensory cortex. We provide novel evidence that one's own emotional expression acts as a top-down influence modulating low-level neural encoding during facial perception.

Interoception is the process of perceiving afferent signals arising from within the body including heart rate (HR), gastric signals, etc. and has been described as a mechanism crucially involved in the creation of self-awareness and selfhood. The heart beat perception task is a tool to measure individuals’ interoceptive accuracy (IAcc). IAcc correlates positively with measures of self-awareness and with attributes including emotional sensitivity, empathy, prosocial behavior, and efficient decision-making. \ud \ud IAcc is only moderate in the general population. Attempts to identify groups of people who might have higher IAcc due to their specific training (e.g., yoga, meditation) have not been successful. However, a recent study with musicians suggests that those trained in the arts might exhibit high IAcc. Therefore, we here tested IAcc in professional dancers. Twenty professional dancers and 20 female control participants performed 4 intervals of a heartbeat perception task while their actual HR was recorded. Dancers had a higher IAcc, and this effect was independent of their lower heart rates (a proxy measure of physical fitness), counting ability and knowledge about HR. An additional between-group analysis after a median split in the dancer group (based on ‘years of dance experience’) showed that junior dancers’ IAcc differed from controls, and senior dancers’ IAcc was higher than both junior dancers and controls. General art experience correlated positively with IAcc. No correlations were found between IAcc and questionnaire measures of empathy, emotional experience, and alexithymia. These findings are discussed in the context of current theories of interoception and emotion –highlighting the features of arts training that might be related to IAcc.

It is well established that emotional responses to stimuli presented to one perceptive modality (e.g., visual) are modulated by the concurrent presentation of affective information to another modality (e.g., auditory)—an effect known as the cross-modal bias. However, the affective mechanisms mediating this effect are still not fully understood. It remains unclear what role different dimensions of stimulus valence and arousal play in mediating the effect, and to what extent cross-modal influences impact not only our perception and conscious affective experiences, but also our psychophysiological emotional response. We addressed these issues by measuring participants’ subjective emotion ratings and their Galvanic Skin Responses (GSR) in a cross-modal affect perception paradigm employing videos of ballet dance movements and instrumental classical music as the stimuli. We chose these stimuli to explore the cross-modal bias in a context of stimuli (ballet dance movements) that most participants would have relatively little prior experience with. Results showed (i) that the cross-modal bias was more pronounced for sad than for happy movements, whereas it was equivalent when contrasting high vs. low arousal movements; and (ii) that movement valence did not modulate participants’ GSR, while movement arousal did, such that GSR was potentiated in the case of low arousal movements with sad music and when high arousal movements were paired with happy music. Results are discussed in the context of the affective dimension of neuroentrainment and with regards to implications for the art community., The study was funded by the research project FFI2010-20759 (Spanish Government: Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness). Julia Frimodt Christensen was supported by FPU PHD scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (AP2009-2889). Beatriz Calvo-Merino was supported by the grant RYC-2008-03090 and PSI2012-34558 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

Memory functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in the encoding of relational but not item information and difficulties in the recollection of contextually rich episodic memories but not in the retrieval of relatively context‐free memories through processes of familiarity. The neural underpinnings of this profile and the extent to which encoding difficulties contribute to retrieval difficulties in ASD remain unclear. Using a paradigm developed by Addis and McAndrews [2006; Neuroimage, 33, 1194–1206] we asked adults with and without a diagnosis of ASD to study word‐triplets during functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanning that varied in the number of category relations amongst component words. Performance at test confirmed attenuated recollection in the context of preserved familiarity based retrieval in ASD. The results also showed that recollection but not familiarity based retrieval increases as a function of category relations in word triads for both groups, indicating a close link between the encoding of relational information and recollection. This link was further supported by the imaging results, where blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal responses in overlapping regions of the inferior prefrontal cortex were sensitive to the relational encoding manipulation as well as the contrast between recollection versus familiarity based retrieval. Interestingly, however, there was no evidence of prefrontal signal differentiation for this latter contrast in the ASD group for whom signal changes in a left hippocampal region were also marginally attenuated. Together, these observations suggest that attenuated levels of episodic recollection in ASD are, at least in part, attributable to anomalies in relational encoding processes. Autism Res 2015, 8: 317–327. © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Current models of face perception propose that initial visual processing is followed by activation of nonvisual somatosensory areas that contributes to emotion recognition. To test whether there is a pure and independent involvement of somatosensory cortex (SCx) during face processing over and above visual responses, we directly measured participants' somatosensory-evoked activity by tactually probing (105 ms postvisual facial stimuli) the state of SCx during an emotion discrimination task while controlling for visual effects. Discrimination of emotional versus neutral expressions enhanced early somatosensory-evoked activity between 40 and 80 ms after stimulus onset, suggesting visual emotion processing in SCx. This effect was source localized within primary, secondary, and associative somatosensory cortex. Emotional face processing influenced somatosensory responses to both face (congruent body part) and finger (control site) tactile stimulation, suggesting a general process that includes nonfacial cortical representations. Gender discrimination of the same facial expressions did not modulate somatosensory-evoked activity. We provide novel evidence that SCx activation is not a byproduct of visual processing but is independently shaped by face emotion processing.

An integral part of dance is music. Over the last ten years, however, dance stimuli have been repeatedly used to study action observation processes without music, increasing our understanding of the influence of observer’s physical abilities on action perception. Moreover, beyond trained skills and empathy traits, very little has been investigated on how other observer or spectators’ properties modulate action observation and action preference. Since strong correlations have been shown between music and personality traits, here we aim to investigate how personality traits shape the appreciation of dance when this is presented with 3 different music/sounds. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between personality traits and the subjective aesthetic experience of 52 spectators watching a 24 min lasting contemporary dance performance projected on a big screen containing three movement phrases performed to three different sound scores: classical music (i.e. Bach), an electronic sound-score, and a section without music but where the breathing of the performers was audible. We found that first, spectators rated the experience of watching dance without music significantly different from with music. Second, we found that the higher spectators scored on the Big Five personality factor openness, the more they liked the no-music section. Third, spectators’ physical experience with dance was not linked to their appreciation but was significantly related to high average extravert scores. For the first time, we showed that spectators’ reported entrainment to watching dance movements without music is strongly related to their personality and thus may need to be considered when using dance as a means to investigate action observation processes and aesthetic preferences.

The emotional response to music, or musical emotion, is a universal response that draws on diverse psychological processes implemented in a large array of neural structures and mechanisms. Studies using electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance, lesions and individuals with extent musical training have begun to elucidate some of these mechanisms. The objective of this article is reviewing the most relevant studies that have tried to identify the neural correlates of musical emotion from the more automatic to the more complex processes, and to understand how these correlates interact in the brain. The article describes how the presentation of music perceived as emotional is associated with a rapid autonomic response in thalamic and subthalamic structures, accompanied by changes in the electrodermal and endocrine responses. It also explains how musical emotion processing activates auditory cortex, as well as a series of limbic and paralimbic structures, such as the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex or the hippocampus, demonstrating the relevant contribution of the limbic system to musical emotion. Further, it is detailed how musical emotion depends to a great extent on semantic and syntactic process carried out in temporal and parietofrontal areas, respectively. Some of the recent works demonstrating that musical emotion highly relies on emotional simulation are also mentioned. Finally, a summary of these studies, their limitations, and suggestions for further research on the neuroarchitecture of musical emotion are given.

La respuesta emocional ante la música, o emoción musical, es una respuesta universal que depende de diferentes procesos psicológicos y recluta una extensa red de estructuras neuronales. Mediante el empleo de técnicas como la electroencefalografía, la resonancia magnética funcional y los estudios con población clínica e individuos con formación musical previa, se ha empezado a dilucidar estos mecanismos cerebrales. El objetivo de este artículo es hacer una revisión de los trabajos más relevantes en los que se identifican los correlatos neuronales de la emoción musical, desde los procesos más automáticos hasta los más complejos, y comprender cómo interaccionan en el cerebro. En concreto, se describe cómo la presentación de música emocional está asociada a una respuesta rápida en estructuras talámicas y subtalámicas, acompañada por cambios electrodérmicos y endocrinos. También se explica que el procesamiento de la emoción musical implica la activación de la corteza auditiva y estructuras límbicas y paralímbicas, como la amígdala, la corteza cingulada anterior o el hipocampo, lo que demuestra la contribución del sistema límbico a la emoción musical. Asimismo, se detalla cómo la emoción musical depende de los significados semántico y sintáctico de la música, procesados en áreas temporales y parietofrontales, respectivamente. Además, se mencionan trabajos recientes que han demostrado cómo los mecanismos de simulación emocional también contribuyen a la emoción musical. Por último, se hace un resumen de estos trabajos, comentando sus limitaciones y ofreciendo alternativas para seguir avanzando en el estudio de la neuroarquitectura de la emoción musical.

The discovery of mirror neurons in the macaque monkey, or neurons in the premotor cortex that respond during the execution and perception of motor acts, established the first neurophysiological integration of action and perception. Subsequent research has identified and characterized a similar mirror neuron system in human observers that is experience-dependent in that it responds most strongly during the observation of actions that fall within the observer’s motor repertoire. Furthermore, evidence is reviewed that indicates that the mirror neuron system plays a key role in the understanding of other people’s intentions from their actions.

As part of a programme of research that is developing tools to enhance choreographic practice, an interdisciplinary team of cognitive scientists, neuroscientists and dance professionals collaborated on two studies examining the mental representations used to support movement creation. We studied choreographer Wayne McGregor's approach to movement creation through tasking, in which he asks dancers to create movement in response to task instructions that require a great deal of mental imagery and decision making. In our first experiment, we used experience sampling methods (self-report scales and reports about the current focus of thought) with the full company of Wayne McGregor | Random Dance to describe what the dancers report thinking about while creating movement, and to establish how their experiences change as a function of different task conditions. In particular, we contrasted a conventional ‘active’ condition (where dancers are free to move around) with a ‘static’ condition (where they have to create movement mentally, without moving), because all neuroimaging studies of dance require participants to lie motionless within a scanner. We adapted the static mode from Experiment 1 for the neuroimaging session in Experiment 2. Here we recorded the brain activity of an experienced dancer from Wayne McGregor | Random Dance while she mentally undertook movement creation tasks similar to those used in our experience sampling experiment. Both studies involved imagery tasks of a primarily spatial-praxic nature (involving an imagined object or volume that could be approached and manipulated) and imagery that focused on content invoking emotional narratives. In the first study, the dancers’ awareness was focused more than they had anticipated upon conceptual rather than physical or bodily aspects. The very act of reflecting on, and categorising, their experiences provided the dancers with insights about their mental habits during innovative movement creation. Such insights provide conditions under which habits can be recognised and then altered to adopt alternative points in mental space from which to create movement material. Providing the dancers and McGregor with a means to communicate more productively about the properties of the task-based instructions has been acknowledged by the company to be of clear benefit and a useful addition to their working process. In the second study we assessed the feasibility of using fMRI to study the neural underpinnings of choreographing movement tasks. The experiment enabled us to compare brain activity in imagery and movement creation. The data raise some key questions concerning the mental context in which such thinking occurs and, given the clear limitations of the current fMRI and experience sampling work, how future research might usefully be directed. Taken together, these two exploratory studies indicate that the experiential and neural attributes of imagery during movement creation are open to systematic investigation: innovative movement creation can start from alternative points in mental, as well as physical, space. This enables us to look forward to establishing with greater precision how tasks that challenge dancers in different ways may affect mental and neural processes and how variation in imagery use across dancers might contribute to the variety of movement creation that they produce. Notably, the act of reflecting on the experience of movement creation also offers some practical leverage to help dancers develop a wider range of strategies for innovation. These findings are being used to contribute to further work informing the development of personal, notebook-like, Choreographic Thinking Tools.

Humans appear to be the only animals to have developed the practice and culture of art. This practice presumably relies on special processing circuits within the human brain associated with a distinct subjective experience, termed aesthetic experience, and preferentially evoked by artistic stimuli. We assume that positive or negative aesthetic judgments are an important function of neuroaesthetic circuits. The localization of these circuits in the brain remains unclear, though neuroimaging studies have suggested several possible neural correlates of aesthetic preference. We applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over candidate brain areas to disrupt aesthetic processing while healthy volunteers made aesthetic preference judgments between pairs of dance postures, or control non-body stimuli. Based on evidence from visual body perception studies, we targeted the ventral premotor cortex (vPMC) and extrastriate body area (EBA), in the left and right hemispheres. rTMS over EBA reduced aesthetic sensitivity for body stimuli relative to rTMS over vPMC, while no such difference was found for non-body stimuli. We interpret our results within the framework of dual routes for visual body processing. rTMS over either EBA or vPMC reduced the contributions of the stimulated area to body processing, leaving processing more reliant on the unaffected route. Disruption of EBA reduces the local processing of the stimuli, and reduced observers’ aesthetic sensitivity. Conversely, disruption of the global route via vPMC increased the relative contribution of the local route via EBA, and thus increased aesthetic sensitivity. In this way, we suggest a complementary contribution of both local and global routes to aesthetic processing.

Biological motion perception is influenced by observers’ familiarity with the observed action. Here, we used classical dance as a means to investigate how visual and motor experience modulates perceptual mechanism for configural processing of actions. Although some ballet moves are performed by only one gender, male and female dancers train together and acquire visual knowledge of all ballet moves. Twenty-four expert ballet dancers (12 female) and matched non-expert participants viewed pairs of upright and inverted point light female and common dance movements. Visual discrimination between different exemplars of the same movement presented upright was significantly better in experts than controls, whilst no differences were found when the same stimuli were presented upside down. These results suggest expertise influences configural action processing. Within the expert group, effects were stronger for female participants than for males, whilst no differences were found between movement types. This observer gender effect could suggest an additional role for motor familiarity in action perception, over and above the visual experience. Our results are consistent with a specific motor contribution to configural processing of action.

The field of neuroaesthetics attempts to identify the brain processes underlying aesthetic experience, including but not limited to beauty. Previous neuroaesthetic studies have focussed largely on paintings and music, while performing arts such as dance have been less studied. Nevertheless, increasing knowledge of the neural mechanisms that represent the bodies and actions of others, and which contribute to empathy, make a neuroaesthetics of dance timely. Here, we present the first neuroscientific study of aesthetic perception in the context of the performing arts. We investigated brain areas whose activity during passive viewing of dance stimuli was related to later, independent aesthetic evaluation of the same stimuli. Brain activity of six naive male subjects was measured using fMRI, while they watched 24 dance movements, and performed an irrelevant task. In a later session, participants rated each movement along a set of established aesthetic dimensions. The ratings were used to identify brain regions that were more active when viewing moves that received high average ratings than moves that received low average ratings. This contrast revealed bilateral activity in the occipital cortices and in right premotor cortex. Our results suggest a possible role of visual and sensorimotor brain areas in an automatic aesthetic response to dance. This sensorimotor response may explain why dance is widely appreciated in so many human cultures.

International audience; When we observe someone performing an action, do our brains simulate making that action? Acquired motor skills offer a unique way to test this question, since people differ widely in the actions they have learned to perform. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study differences in brain activity between watching an action that one has learned to do and an action that one has not, in order to assess whether the brain processes of action observation are modulated by the expertise and motor repertoire of the observer. Experts in classical ballet, experts in capoeira and inexpert control subjects viewed videos of ballet or capoeira actions. Comparing the brain activity when dancers watched their own dance style versus the other style therefore reveals the influence of motor expertise on action observation. We found greater bilateral activations in premotor cortex and intraparietal sulcus, right superior parietal lobe and left posterior superior temporal sulcus when expert dancers viewed movements that they had been trained to perform compared to movements they had not. Our results show that this 'mirror system' integrates observed actions of others with an individual's personal motor repertoire, and suggest that the human brain understands actions by motor simulation.

Objective. In this review we trace some of the mayor developments in the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) as a technique for the investigation of cognitive neuroscience. Technical aspects of the magnetic stimulation are also reviewed. Development. Among the many methods now available for studying activity of the human brain, magnetic stimulation is the only technique that allows us to interfere actively with human brain function. At the same time it provides a high degree of spatial and temporal resolution. Standard TMS applications (central motor conduction time, threshold and amplitude of motor evoked potentials) allow the evaluation of the motor conduction in the central nervous system and more complex TMS applications (paired-pulse stimulation, silent period) permit study the mechanisms of diseases causing changes in the excitability of cortical areas. These techniques also allow investigation into motor disorder, epilepsy, cognitive function and psychiatric disorders. Conclusions. Transcranial magnetic stimulation applications have an important place among the investigative tools to study cognitive functions and neurological and psychiatric disorders. Even so, despite the many published research and clinical studies, a systematic study about the possible diagnostic value and role in neurocognitive rehabilitation of TMS testing need to be realized to offer new possibilities of future applications.