Neural bases of emotional and motivational appraisals on processing of emotional visual scenes depending on spatial frequencies

International audienceVisual processing of emotional stimuli critically depends on the cognitive appraisalstype such as identifying the self-emotional experience or emotional state ofothers. Moreover, each particular affective appraisal may be driven by a specificspatial frequency content in emotional stimuli. The present fMRI study aimed toinvestigate the brain regions involved in the visual processing of emotional scenesduring two distinct affective appraisal tasks, one emotional based on the self-emotionalexperience and one motivational based on the tendency to action. The relativerole of spatial frequency content of visual stimuli during each of these twoappraisal tasks was also explored by using scenes filtered in low spatial frequencies(LSF) and high spatial frequencies (HSF). Results showed a greater activationof the visual regions and amygdala in the motivational task compared to the emotionaltask. Motivational task also induced specific activations of motor areas(premotor cortex and supplementary motor area) and parietal regions (precuneus,superior and inferior parietal lobules and angular gyrus) although requiredmotor response was similar in the two tasks. Parietal activations were particularlyobtained in appraisal of a tendency to approach a pleasant scene. These resultssuggest that the identification of a tendency to action specifically involves motorand navigation processes. Furthermore, cerebral activations in the motivationaltask were mostly greater for HSF scenes compared to LSF scenes suggesting thatthe tendency to action is mainly driven by the detailed information in scenes. Inthe emotional task, only the visual regions showed a role of the spatial frequencieswith greater activity for HSF scenes (compared to LSF scenes) to evaluate theunpleasant experience and for LSF scenes (compared to HSF scenes) to evaluatethe pleasant experience. Our study stresses distinct processing for identifying thetendency to action and the self-emotional experience on emotional visual scenes,and illustrates the flexible use of spatial frequency content in scenes dependingon the task demands