Beatriz Calvo-Merino

Domain specific expertise affects neural and behavioral processes of perception and memory. We explore if sensorimotor expertise extends to other relevant social mechanisms, such as the neural processing of emotional faces. We recorded brain activity of 26 dancers and 26 non-dancers using visual and somatosensory evoked potentials (VEPs, SEPs) during an emotion and sex discrimination task on happy, afraid, and neutral faces. We predicted expertise-related modulation of visual facial emotion processing in visual and somatosensory areas. EEG results revealed distinct visual and somatosensory ERP patterns in the two groups. VEP findings showed that dancers distinguished between neutral and emotional faces at N170 and P200. Non-dancers differentiated between the three emotions with more lateralized processing. For SEPs, dancers uniquely showed early emotion effects (P50) in central somatosensory regions and task-modulated somatosensory engagement at later stages (N80, P100). Non-dancers showed later, localized somatosensory effects. In summary, dance expertise shapes both visual and somatosensory processing of facial emotion, indicating a broader neural representation of emotions. These findings provide novel evidence for a differential facial emotion processing in dancers, extending the dance expertise modulation beyond perception of dance-specific stimuli, to face emotion perception. Overall, this work highlights the strong influence of sensorimotor training on emotion perception.

Background: This study examined the influence of creative thinking, shaped by different forms of episodic mental representations, on human movement. The primary objective was to investigate how creativity, elicited through distinct cognitive stimuli, affects movement variability. Methods: Twenty-four professional dancers developed two original dance phrases, each inspired by either a visual or a narrative mental representation. Movement data were collected via inertial sensor technology and subsequently analysed to determine differences in motor expression. Results: The results indicated that movements performed under narrative representation conditions exhibited significantly increased risk-taking behaviour, greater movement amplitude, and a higher overall movement volume compared to those guided by visual stimuli. Conclusions: These findings underscore the role of creativity in modulating both the expressive and physical dimensions of human movement. Moreover, this research demonstrates the potential of inertial sensor technology not only to capture kinematic patterns but also to provide insight into the deeper layers of human artistic and cognitive processes.

This study explores contagious yawning in adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in the presence of a non-biological humanoid agent, an android. Chimpanzees observed an android portraying specific facial expressions, including yawns and gapes. The results showed that adult chimpanzees exhibited across-agent yawn contagion, with a graded response: the highest contagion occurred when the android displayed a fully wide-open mouth (Yawn condition), a reduced response when the mouth was partially opened (Gape condition), and no contagion when the android’s mouth was closed (Close condition). Additionally, chimpanzees engaged in behaviours associated with drowsiness, such as gathering bedding materials, constructing nests, and lying down, while observing the android yawning. This suggests that yawning by an unfamiliar model may act as a contextual cue for rest, rather than merely triggering a motor resonance response. These findings contribute to the understanding of non-human primates’ susceptibility to contagiously induced behaviours, specifically yawns, even when triggered by an artificial agent. This study highlights the role of social factors in shaping yawn contagion and calls for further research on cross-species and cross-agent interactions.

While art, nature, and social interactions are key elements of a healthy culture and lifestyle, how nature and social factors in paintings impact the viewer experience still remains unclear. This study aimed to explore how the number of depicted people, the presence of interpersonal touch, and the setting (indoor vs. outdoor) affect art preference. A total of 420 paintings were rated (online survey) on their liking across 300 participants. Across participants, paintings without people were significantly liked over paintings with people, which was especially prominent in depictions of outdoor settings. Furthermore, while people liked paintings without touch, this was only the case for paintings of outdoor depictions. The study also explored how these preferences were modulated by individual differences. The findings underscore the relevance and importance of social aspects in art and how this interacts with the viewer's individuality.

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.

This chapter describes experimental studies that have examined the brain systems involved in dance observation. We will focus on experimental work revealing neural, cognitive, physiological, and behavioural mechanisms that contribute to observing and representing dance. In addition, we will explore the concept of engaging with dance from aesthetic and emotional perspectives. Finally, we emphasize the significant role of the observer’s expertise in all these processes and how being a dancer changes not only what you can do but how you see dance, how you feel dance, and how your brain watches dance.

Consistent with current models of embodied emotions, this study investigates whether the somatosensory system shows reduced sensitivity to facial emotional expressions in autistic compared with neurotypical individuals, and whether these differences are independent from between-group differences in visual processing of facial stimuli. To investigate the dynamics of somatosensory activity over and above visual carryover effects, we recorded EEG activity from two groups of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or typically developing (TD) humans (male and female), while they were performing a facial emotion discrimination task and a control gender task. To probe the state of the somatosensory system during face processing, in 50% of trials we evoked somatosensory activity by delivering task-irrelevant tactile taps on participants' index finger, 105 ms after visual stimulus onset. Importantly, we isolated somatosensory from concurrent visual activity by subtracting visual responses from activity evoked by somatosensory and visual stimuli. Results revealed significant task-dependent group differences in mid-latency components of somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs). ASD participants showed a selective reduction of SEP amplitudes (P100) compared with TD during emotion task; and TD, but not ASD, showed increased somatosensory responses during emotion compared with gender discrimination. Interestingly, autistic traits, but not alexithymia, significantly predicted SEP amplitudes evoked during emotion, but not gender, task. Importantly, we did not observe the same pattern of group differences in visual responses. Our study provides direct evidence of reduced recruitment of the somatosensory system during emotion discrimination in ASD and suggests that this effect is not a byproduct of differences in visual processing.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTThe somatosensory system is involved in embodiment of visually presented facial expressions of emotion. Despite autism being characterized by difficulties in emotion-related processing, no studies have addressed whether this extends to embodied representations of others' emotions. By dissociating somatosensory activity from visual evoked potentials, we provide the first evidence of reduced recruitment of the somatosensory system during emotion discrimination in autistic participants, independently from differences in visual processing between typically developing and autism spectrum disorder participants. Our study uses a novel methodology to reveal the neural dynamics underlying difficulties in emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorder and provides direct evidence that embodied simulation of others' emotional expressions operates differently in autistic individuals.

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.