Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures

For humans as social beings, other people’s hands are highly visually conspicuous. Exceptionally striking are hands in other than natural configuration which have been found to elicit distinct brain activation. Here we studied response strength and lateralization of this activation using event-relat...

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Main Authors: Santo, Miguel G. Espírito, Chen, Hsin-Yuan, Schürmann, Martin
Format: Article
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2017
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47303/
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author Santo, Miguel G. Espírito
Chen, Hsin-Yuan
Schürmann, Martin
author_facet Santo, Miguel G. Espírito
Chen, Hsin-Yuan
Schürmann, Martin
author_sort Santo, Miguel G. Espírito
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description For humans as social beings, other people’s hands are highly visually conspicuous. Exceptionally striking are hands in other than natural configuration which have been found to elicit distinct brain activation. Here we studied response strength and lateralization of this activation using event-related potentials (ERPs), in particular, occipitotemporal N1 responses as correlates of activation in extrastriate body area. Participants viewed computer-generated images of hands, half of them showing distorted fingers, the other half showing natural fingers. As control stimuli of similar geometric complexity, images of chairs were shown, half of them with distorted legs, half with standard legs. The contrast of interest was between distorted and natural/standard stimuli. For hands, stronger N1 responses were observed for distorted (vs natural) stimuli from 170 ms post stimulus. Such stronger N1 responses were found for distorted hands and absent for distorted chairs, therefore likely unrelated to visuospatial processing of the unusual distorted shapes. Rather, N1 modulation over both hemispheres - but robustly right-lateralized - could reflect distorted hands as emotionally laden stimuli. The results are in line with privileged visual processing of hands as highly salient body parts, with distortions engaging neural resources that are especially activated for biological stimuli in social perception.
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spelling nottingham-473032020-05-04T19:14:25Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47303/ Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures Santo, Miguel G. Espírito Chen, Hsin-Yuan Schürmann, Martin For humans as social beings, other people’s hands are highly visually conspicuous. Exceptionally striking are hands in other than natural configuration which have been found to elicit distinct brain activation. Here we studied response strength and lateralization of this activation using event-related potentials (ERPs), in particular, occipitotemporal N1 responses as correlates of activation in extrastriate body area. Participants viewed computer-generated images of hands, half of them showing distorted fingers, the other half showing natural fingers. As control stimuli of similar geometric complexity, images of chairs were shown, half of them with distorted legs, half with standard legs. The contrast of interest was between distorted and natural/standard stimuli. For hands, stronger N1 responses were observed for distorted (vs natural) stimuli from 170 ms post stimulus. Such stronger N1 responses were found for distorted hands and absent for distorted chairs, therefore likely unrelated to visuospatial processing of the unusual distorted shapes. Rather, N1 modulation over both hemispheres - but robustly right-lateralized - could reflect distorted hands as emotionally laden stimuli. The results are in line with privileged visual processing of hands as highly salient body parts, with distortions engaging neural resources that are especially activated for biological stimuli in social perception. Nature Publishing Group 2017-10-26 Article PeerReviewed Santo, Miguel G. Espírito, Chen, Hsin-Yuan and Schürmann, Martin (2017) Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures. Scientific Reports, 7 . 14129/1-14129/10. ISSN 2045-2322 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14474-x doi:10.1038/s41598-017-14474-x doi:10.1038/s41598-017-14474-x
spellingShingle Santo, Miguel G. Espírito
Chen, Hsin-Yuan
Schürmann, Martin
Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures
title Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures
title_full Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures
title_fullStr Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures
title_full_unstemmed Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures
title_short Lateralized occipito-temporal N1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures
title_sort lateralized occipito-temporal n1 responses to images of salient distorted finger postures
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47303/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47303/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47303/