Population coding of affect across stimuli, modalities and individuals

It remains unclear how the brain represents external objective sensory events alongside our internal subjective impressions of them—affect. Representational mapping of population level activity evoked by complex scenes and basic tastes uncovered a neural code supporting a continuous axis of pleasant-to-unpleasant valence. This valence code was distinct from low-level physical and high-level object properties. While ventral temporal and anterior insular cortices supported valence codes specific to vision and taste, both the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortices (OFC), maintained a valence code independent of sensory origin. Further only the OFC code could classify experienced affect across participants. The entire valence spectrum is represented as a collective pattern in regional neural activity as sensory-specific and abstract codes, whereby the subjective quality of affect can be objectively quantified across stimuli, modalities, and people.