@article {KragelENEURO.0090-15.2016, author = {Philip A Kragel and Kevin S LaBar}, title = {Somatosensory representations link the perception of emotional expressions and sensory experience}, elocation-id = {ENEURO.0090-15.2016}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1523/ENEURO.0090-15.2016}, publisher = {Society for Neuroscience}, abstract = {Studies of human emotion perception have linked a distributed set of brain regions to the recognition of emotion in facial, vocal, and body expressions. In particular, lesions to somatosensory cortex in the right hemisphere have been shown to impair recognition of facial and vocal expressions of emotion. While these findings suggest that somatosensory cortex represents body states associated with distinct emotions, such as a furrowed brow or gaping jaw, functional evidence directly linking somatosensory activity and subjective experience during emotion perception is critically lacking. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate decoding techniques, we show that perceiving vocal and facial expressions of emotion yields hemodynamic activity in right somatosensory cortex that discriminates among emotion categories, exhibits somatotopic organization, and tracks self-reported sensory experience. The findings both support embodied accounts of emotion and provide mechanistic insight into how emotional expressions are capable of biasing subjective experience in those who perceive them.Significance Statement: The perception of emotion in others often results in related sensory experiences in oneself, which is thought to facilitate the social spread of emotions. Using functional neuroimaging, we have discovered a neural mechanism capable of explaining how percepts of emotion bias subjective experience. We show that activity in right somatosensory cortex can be used to classify emotions conveyed in facial and vocal expressions. Importantly, the capacity of this region to predict perceived emotions in others correlates with reports of subjective experience generated by the expressions in oneself. The results reveal a novel, specialized role for the somatosensory cortex in linking emotional perception with subjective sensory experience.}, URL = {https://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2016/04/14/ENEURO.0090-15.2016}, eprint = {https://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2016/04/14/ENEURO.0090-15.2016.full.pdf}, journal = {eNeuro} }