Abstract
The retrieval of emotional scene is a critical faculty for our survival in the real world. Especially, retrieval of scenes that are relevant to negative emotions can help you deal with dangerous situations. However, it remains unclear how emotional scenes are represented in the cortical areas during retrieval compared to neutral scenes. To investigate representations of emotional (negative) or neutral scenes during retrieval, here we performed an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment. Prior to scanning, participants were trained to memorize the pseudoword-scene associations. Every participant showed good performance (>99% correct) in the forced-choice tests after training, indicating accurate retrieval of scene information. In addition, the subjective vividness rating showed comparable scores between retrieved negative scenes and neutral scenes. During scanning, participants were presented with perception and retrieval trials. We focused on the response patterns of scene-selective visual areas: PPA (parahippocampal place area), OPA (occipital place area), and RSC (retrosplenial cortex). Using multivoxel pattern analyses, we found that PPA showed more discriminable patterns of response to individual negative scenes during retrieval compared to those elicited during retrieval of individual neutral scenes, whereas other scene-selective areas showed little impact of emotion on the discrimination. These results suggest that negative emotion generates more discriminative neural responses for individual scenes especially in PPA during retrieval. This work was supported by a grant of the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (HI15C3175), and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (2016R1C1B2010726).
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017