Seminario del Prof. Alessio Avenanti

mercoledì 3 Dicembre alle ore 11.45 aula 2C di via Venezia 12

03.12.2014

Abstract
Understanding what others do and feel is crucial for social life. Covert emotional states (e.g., happiness) are often associated with overt motor behaviors (e.g., smiling, joyful body postures and gestures). Based on this link, embodied simulation theories posit that observers can understand the unobservable emotional states of others by internally simulating their observable motor behavior. What remains unclear is the extent to which recognition of others’ emotions requires such resonance mechanism. In a first series of studies, I will show that brain areas implementing resonance mechanisms are indeed critical for the visual recognition of others’ actions and emotional expressions. I will show that brain lesion or non-invasive stimulation of these regions affect performance in visual recognition tasks. In a second series, however, I will show that when processing emotional body language, motor resonance occurs late in the motor system. Moreover, earlier activity in the motor system appears to reflect appropriate motor reactions to the observed emotions rather than a motor simulation of the observed body expression. Such an early motor reactivity suggests some forms of emotion recognition can be implemented very quickly and earlier than motor resonance. Lastly, in a third series, I will present data suggesting that an early coding of the meaning of others’ emotional expressions can be implemented in high-order visual regions, i.e. upstream the motor system. Taken together, these research lines suggest that neural activity reflecting action simulation may help refining visual perception of others’ emotions. However, in contrast to strong proposals of embodied simulation theories, motor simulation is not the solely nor the faster way to get access to the meaning of others’ emotions.