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de Gelder, Beatrice M.L.

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de Gelder

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Beatrice M.L.

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de Gelder, Beatrice M.L.
Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.d9059c91-7302-4b72-9767-8e51daba2447

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    The Constructive Nature of Affective Vision: Seeing Fearful Scenes Activates Extrastriate Body Area
    (Public Library of Science, 2012) Sinke, Charlotte B. A.; Van den Stock, Jan; Goebel, Rainer; de Gelder, Beatrice M.L.
    It is part of basic emotions like fear or anger that they prepare the brain to act adaptively. Hence scenes representing emotional events are normally associated with characteristic adaptive behavior. Normally, face and body representation areas in the brain are modulated by these emotions when presented in the face or body. Here, we provide neuroimaging evidence (using functional magnetic resonance imaging) that the extrastriate body area (EBA) is highly responsive when subjects observe isolated faces presented in emotional scenes. This response of EBA to threatening scenes in which no body is present gives rise to speculation about its function. We discuss the possibility that the brain reacts proactively to the emotional meaning of the scene.
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    Early Category-Specific Cortical Activation Revealed by Visual Stimulus Inversion
    (Public Library of Science, 2008) Meeren, Hanneke K. M.; Hadjikhani, Nouchine; Ahlfors, Seppo; Hämäläinen, Matti S.; de Gelder, Beatrice M.L.
    Visual categorization may already start within the first 100-ms after stimulus onset, in contrast with the long-held view that during this early stage all complex stimuli are processed equally and that category-specific cortical activation occurs only at later stages. The neural basis of this proposed early stage of high-level analysis is however poorly understood. To address this question we used magnetoencephalography and anatomically-constrained distributed source modeling to monitor brain activity with millisecond-resolution while subjects performed an orientation task on the upright and upside-down presented images of three different stimulus categories: faces, houses and bodies. Significant inversion effects were found for all three stimulus categories between 70–100-ms after picture onset with a highly category-specific cortical distribution. Differential responses between upright and inverted faces were found in well-established face-selective areas of the inferior occipital cortex and right fusiform gyrus. In addition, early category-specific inversion effects were found well beyond visual areas. Our results provide the first direct evidence that category-specific processing in high-level category-sensitive cortical areas already takes place within the first 100-ms of visual processing, significantly earlier than previously thought, and suggests the existence of fast category-specific neocortical routes in the human brain.
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    Instrumental Music Influences Recognition of Emotional Body Language
    (Springer US, 2009) Van den Stock, Jan; Peretz, Isabelle; Grèzes, Julie; de Gelder, Beatrice M.L.
    In everyday life, emotional events are perceived by multiple sensory systems. Research has shown that recognition of emotions in one modality is biased towards the emotion expressed in a simultaneously presented but task irrelevant modality. In the present study, we combine visual and auditory stimuli that convey similar affective meaning but have a low probability of co-occurrence in everyday life. Dynamic face-blurred whole body expressions of a person grasping an object while expressing happiness or sadness are presented in combination with fragments of happy or sad instrumental classical music. Participants were instructed to categorize the emotion expressed by the visual stimulus. The results show that recognition of body language is influenced by the auditory stimuli. These findings indicate that crossmodal influences as previously observed for audiovisual speech can also be obtained from the ignored auditory to the attended visual modality in audiovisual stimuli that consist of whole bodies and music.