neuroscience; brain; virtual reality; neuroimaging; emotion; cinema studies; film aesthetics; cognition; network
Lopes Phil, Boulic Ronan (2020), Towards Designing Games for Experimental Protocols Investigating Human-Based Phenomena, in
FDG '20: International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, Bugibba MaltaACM, USA.
Bolton Thomas A.W., Morgenroth Elenor, Preti Maria Giulia, Van De Ville Dimitri (2020), Tapping into Multi-Faceted Human Behavior and Psychopathology Using fMRI Brain Dynamics, in
Trends in Neurosciences, 43(9), 667-680.
TianNana, ClémentRomain, LopesPhil, BoulicRonan (2020), One the effect of the Vertical Axis Alignment on Cybersickness and Game Experience in Supine Posture, in
IEEE Conference on Games (CoG) , Osaka, JapanIEEE, USA.
Lopes Phil, Tian Nana, Boulic Ronan (2020),
Exploring Blink-Rate Behaviors for Cybersickness Detection in VR, IEEE, USA.
Mohammadi Gelareh, Vuilleumier Patrik (2020), A Multi-Componential Approach to Emotion Recognition and the Effect of Personality, in
IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 1-1.
MohammadiGelareh, Van de VilleDimitri, VuilleumierPatrik (2020), MOHAMMADI, Gelareh; VAN DE VILLE, Dimitri; VUILLEUMIER, Patrik. Brain networks subserving functional core processes of emotions identified with componential modelling., in
BioRxiv, 1-38.
Mohammadi Gelareh, Lin Kangying, Vuilleumier Patrik (2019), Towards Understanding Emotional Experience in a Componential Framework, in
2019 8th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII), 123-129.
Marengo Julien, Lopes Phil, Boulic Ronan (2019), On the Influence of the Supine Posture on Simulation Sickness in Virtual Reality, in
2019 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG), London, United KingdomIEEE, USA.
LeitaoJoana, MeulemanBen, Van de VilleDimitri, VuilleumierPatrik, Computational imaging during video-game playing shows dynamic synchronization of cortical and subcortical networks of emotions, in
PLOS Biology.
Emotions are complex and multifaceted phenomena affecting both the mind and body, promoting adaptive behavior in response to challenging events. Theoretical accounts of emotion disagree on their functional organization. Influential models in psychology have emphasized a role for multiple component processes that are recruited and integrated in a dynamic manner to generate emotion episodes, including appraisal mechanisms that process contextual information about an event (such as novelty, pleasantness, goal conduciveness, control, or agency), as well as motivational, expressive, and physiological mechanisms that orchestrate behavioral manifestations. However, the neural architecture of these components remains unresolved. Neuroscience approaches have been dominated by other theoretical models postulating the existence of discrete categories of basic emotions (e.g. fear, anger, joy) or dichotomous dimensions (e.g. valence, arousal) that rely on distinct circuits and provide building blocks for more complex emotional experiences (e.g. shame, pride, etc.). Yet, abundant results from neuroimaging studies in humans in the last two decades suggest a large overlap of activation patterns across different emotion categories and despite differences in valence and/or arousal. For instance, amygdala and insula activity may similarly occur during fear, disgust, laugh, or love. Moreover, these activations typically implicate distributed brain areas (e.g. encompassing sensorimotor and associative cortices) besides limbic regions (traditionally associated with affect and motivation), reflecting an engagement of other domain-specific networks (such as attention, memory, or action preparation). While these findings would be consistent with a multi-componential nature of emotions, no study has systematically investigated emotional brain systems in relation to theoretically defined components. Further, most neuroimaging studies employed impoverished experimental conditions where emotions are induced in a static and indirect, third-person perspective (e.g. pictures, faces). In our project, we aim to (i) chart brain systems mediating different components and appraisals using fMRI and psychophysiology measures during emotional episodes; (ii) use naturalistic and dynamic elicitation procedures, first by exploiting movies where emotions can be decomposed in terms of specific components, and second by designing first-person games and virtual reality environments where specific components can be manipulated experimentally; (iii) deploy new signal analysis and modelling methods to uncover the neural representation of emotion components and relate them to dynamic, time-evolving modulation of brain-wide networks. This will be made possible by the highly interdisciplinary collaboration of 3 teams from cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging (Vuilleumier), signal processing (Van de Ville), and virtual reality engineering (Boulic), with additional contribution from cinema critics (Lombardo) for movie studies. This research will address several key questions in affective and brain science in novel ways, going beyond previous work in each of our disciplines and opening new perspectives for long-term collaboration between our teams.