Social–emotional cues, such as affective vocalizations and emotional faces, automatically elicit emotional action tendencies. Adaptive social–emotional behavior depends on the ability to control these automatic action tendencies. It remains unknown whether neural control over automatic action tendencies is supramodal or relies on parallel modality-specific neural circuits. Here, we address this largely unexplored issue in humans. We consider neural circuits supporting emotional action control in response to affective vocalizations, using an approach–avoidance task known to reliably index control over emotional action tendencies elicited by emotional faces. We isolate supramodal neural contributions to emotional action control through a conjunction analysis of control-related neural activity evoked by auditory and visual affective stimuli, the latter from a previously published data set obtained in an independent sample. We show that the anterior pFC (aPFC) supports control of automatic action tendencies in a supramodal manner, that is, triggered by either emotional faces or affective vocalizations. When affective vocalizations are heard and emotional control is required, the aPFC supports control through negative functional connectivity with the posterior insula. When emotional faces are seen and emotional control is required, control relies on the same aPFC territory downregulating the amygdala. The findings provide evidence for a novel mechanism of emotional action control with a hybrid hierarchical architecture, relying on a supramodal node (aPFC) implementing an abstract goal by modulating modality-specific nodes (posterior insula, amygdala) involved in signaling motivational significance of either affective vocalizations or faces.

Listeners interpret utterances by integrating information from multiple sources including word level semantics and world knowledge. When the semantics of an expression is inconsistent with their knowledge about the world, the listener may have to search through the conceptual space for alternative possible world scenarios that can make the expression more acceptable. Such cognitive exploration requires considerable computational resources and might depend on motivational factors. This study explores whether and how oxytocin, a neuropeptide known to influence social motivation by reducing social anxiety and enhancing affiliative tendencies, can modulate the integration of world knowledge and sentence meanings. The study used a between-participant double-blind randomized placebo-controlled design. Semantic integration, indexed with magnetoencephalography through the N400m marker, was quantified while 45 healthy male participants listened to sentences that were either congruent or incongruent with facts of the world, after receiving intranasally delivered oxytocin or placebo. Compared with congruent sentences, world knowledge incongruent sentences elicited a stronger N400m signal from the left inferior frontal and anterior temporal regions and medial pFC (the N400m effect) in the placebo group. Oxytocin administration significantly attenuated the N400m effect at both sensor and cortical source levels throughout the experiment, in a state-like manner. Additional electrophysiological markers suggest that the absence of the N400m effect in the oxytocin group is unlikely due to the lack of early sensory or semantic processing or a general downregulation of attention. These findings suggest that oxytocin drives listeners to resolve challenges of semantic integration, possibly by promoting the cognitive exploration of alternative possible world scenarios.

A dominant hypothesis on how the brain processes numerical size proposes a spatial representation of numbers as positions on a “mental number line.” An alternative hypothesis considers numbers as elements of a generalized representation of sensorimotor-related magnitude, which is not obligatorily spatial. Here we show that individuals' relative use of spatial and nonspatial representations has a cerebral counterpart in the structural organization of the posterior parietal cortex. Interindividual variability in the linkage between numbers and spatial responses (faster left responses to small numbers and right responses to large numbers; spatial–numerical association of response codes effect) correlated with variations in gray matter volume around the right precuneus. Conversely, differences in the disposition to link numbers to force production (faster soft responses to small numbers and hard responses to large numbers) were related to gray matter volume in the left angular gyrus. This finding suggests that numerical cognition relies on multiple mental representations of analogue magnitude using different neural implementations that are linked to individual traits.

According to embodied theories of language, people understand a verb like throw , at least in part, by mentally simulating throwing . This implicit simulation is often assumed to be similar or identical to motor imagery. Here we used fMRI to test whether implicit simulations of actions during language understanding involve the same cortical motor regions as explicit motor imagery. Healthy participants were presented with verbs related to hand actions (e.g., to throw ) and nonmanual actions (e.g., to kneel ). They either read these verbs (lexical decision task) or actively imagined performing the actions named by the verbs (imagery task). Primary motor cortex showed effector-specific activation during imagery, but not during lexical decision. Parts of premotor cortex distinguished manual from nonmanual actions during both lexical decision and imagery, but there was no overlap or correlation between regions activated during the two tasks. These dissociations suggest that implicit simulation and explicit imagery cued by action verbs may involve different types of motor representations and that the construct of “mental simulation” should be distinguished from “mental imagery” in embodied theories of language.

We have used implicit motor imagery to investigate the neural correlates of motor planning independently from actual movements. Subjects were presented with drawings of left or right hands and asked to judge the hand laterality, regardless of the stimulus rotation from its upright orientation. We paired this task with a visual imagery control task, in which subjects were presented with typographical characters and asked to report whether they saw a canonical letter or its mirror image, regardless of its rotation. We measured neurovascular activity with fast event-related fMRI, distinguishing responses parametrically related to motor imagery from responses evoked by visual imagery and other task-related phenomena. By quantifying behavioral and neurovascular correlates of imagery on a trial-by-trial basis, we could discriminate between stimulus-related, mental rotation-related, and response-related neural activity. We found that specific portions of the posterior parietal and precentral cortex increased their activity as a function of mental rotation only during the motor imagery task. Within these regions, the parietal cortex was visually responsive, whereas the dorsal precentral cortex was not. Response- but not rotation-related activity was found around the left central sulcus (putative primary motor cortex) during both imagery tasks. Our study provides novel evidence on the topography and content of movement representations in the human brain. During intended action, the posterior parietal cortex combines somatosensory and visuomotor information, whereas the dorsal premotor cortex generates the actual motor plan, and the primary motor cortex deals with movement execution. We discuss the relevance of these results in the context of current models of action planning.

Neurovascular correlates of response preparation have been investigated in human neuroimaging studies. However, conventional neuroimaging cannot distinguish, within the same trial, between areas involved in response selection and/ or response execution and areas specifically involved in response preparation. The specific contribution of parietal and frontal areas to motor preparation has been explored in electrophysiological studies in monkey. However, the associative nature of sensorimotor tasks calls for the additional contributions of other cortical regions. In this article, we have investigated the functional anatomy of movement representations in the context of an associative visuomotor task with instructed delays. Neural correlates of movement representations have been assessed by isolating preparatory activity that is independent from the performance of an actual motor act, or from the presence of a response's target. Movement instruction (specified by visual cues) and motor performance (specified by an auditory cue) were separated by a variable delay period. We have used whole-brain event-related fMRI to measure human brain activity during the performance of such a task. We have focused our analysis on specific preparatory activity, defined as a sustained response over variable delay periods between a transient visual instruction cue and a brief motor response, temporally independent from the transient events. Behavioral and electrophysiological controls ensured that preparatory activity was not contaminated by overt motor responses or working memory processes. We report suggestive evidence for multiple movement representations in the human brain. Specific sustained activity in preparation for an action was found not only in parieto-frontal regions but also in extrastriate areas and in the posterior portion of the superior temporal sulcus. We suggest that goal-directed preparatory activity relies on both visuo-motor and visuoperceptual areas. These findings point to a functional anatomical basis for the integration of perceptual and executive processes.