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Recognizing emotions in bodies: Vagus nerve stimulation enhances recognition of anger while impairing sadness

According to the Polyvagal theory, the vagus nerve is the key phylogenetic substrate that supports efficient emotion recognition for promoting safety and survival. Previous studies showed that the vagus nerve affects people’s ability to recognize emotions based on eye regions and whole facial images...

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Autores principales: Steenbergen, Laura, Maraver, María J., Actis-Grosso, Rossana, Ricciardelli, Paola, Colzato, Lorenza S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8563521/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34268714
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13415-021-00928-3
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author Steenbergen, Laura
Maraver, María J.
Actis-Grosso, Rossana
Ricciardelli, Paola
Colzato, Lorenza S.
author_facet Steenbergen, Laura
Maraver, María J.
Actis-Grosso, Rossana
Ricciardelli, Paola
Colzato, Lorenza S.
author_sort Steenbergen, Laura
collection PubMed
description According to the Polyvagal theory, the vagus nerve is the key phylogenetic substrate that supports efficient emotion recognition for promoting safety and survival. Previous studies showed that the vagus nerve affects people’s ability to recognize emotions based on eye regions and whole facial images, but not static bodies. The purpose of this study was to verify whether the previously suggested causal link between vagal activity and emotion recognition can be generalized to situations in which emotions must be inferred from images of whole moving bodies. We employed transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS), a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that stimulates the vagus nerve by a mild electrical stimulation to the auricular branch of the vagus, located in the anterior protuberance of the outer ear. In two sessions, participants received active or sham tVNS before and while performing three emotion recognition tasks, aimed at indexing their ability to recognize emotions from static or moving bodily expressions by actors. Active tVNS, compared to sham stimulation, enhanced the recognition of anger but reduced the ability to recognize sadness, regardless of the type of stimulus (static vs. moving). Convergent with the idea of hierarchical involvement of the vagus in establishing safety, as put forward by the Polyvagal theory, we argue that our findings may be explained by vagus-evoked differential adjustment strategies to emotional expressions. Taken together, our findings fit with an evolutionary perspective on the vagus nerve and its involvement in emotion recognition for the benefit of survival.
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spelling pubmed-85635212021-11-15 Recognizing emotions in bodies: Vagus nerve stimulation enhances recognition of anger while impairing sadness Steenbergen, Laura Maraver, María J. Actis-Grosso, Rossana Ricciardelli, Paola Colzato, Lorenza S. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci Research Article According to the Polyvagal theory, the vagus nerve is the key phylogenetic substrate that supports efficient emotion recognition for promoting safety and survival. Previous studies showed that the vagus nerve affects people’s ability to recognize emotions based on eye regions and whole facial images, but not static bodies. The purpose of this study was to verify whether the previously suggested causal link between vagal activity and emotion recognition can be generalized to situations in which emotions must be inferred from images of whole moving bodies. We employed transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS), a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that stimulates the vagus nerve by a mild electrical stimulation to the auricular branch of the vagus, located in the anterior protuberance of the outer ear. In two sessions, participants received active or sham tVNS before and while performing three emotion recognition tasks, aimed at indexing their ability to recognize emotions from static or moving bodily expressions by actors. Active tVNS, compared to sham stimulation, enhanced the recognition of anger but reduced the ability to recognize sadness, regardless of the type of stimulus (static vs. moving). Convergent with the idea of hierarchical involvement of the vagus in establishing safety, as put forward by the Polyvagal theory, we argue that our findings may be explained by vagus-evoked differential adjustment strategies to emotional expressions. Taken together, our findings fit with an evolutionary perspective on the vagus nerve and its involvement in emotion recognition for the benefit of survival. Springer US 2021-07-15 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8563521/ /pubmed/34268714 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13415-021-00928-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Research Article
Steenbergen, Laura
Maraver, María J.
Actis-Grosso, Rossana
Ricciardelli, Paola
Colzato, Lorenza S.
Recognizing emotions in bodies: Vagus nerve stimulation enhances recognition of anger while impairing sadness
title Recognizing emotions in bodies: Vagus nerve stimulation enhances recognition of anger while impairing sadness
title_full Recognizing emotions in bodies: Vagus nerve stimulation enhances recognition of anger while impairing sadness
title_fullStr Recognizing emotions in bodies: Vagus nerve stimulation enhances recognition of anger while impairing sadness
title_full_unstemmed Recognizing emotions in bodies: Vagus nerve stimulation enhances recognition of anger while impairing sadness
title_short Recognizing emotions in bodies: Vagus nerve stimulation enhances recognition of anger while impairing sadness
title_sort recognizing emotions in bodies: vagus nerve stimulation enhances recognition of anger while impairing sadness
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8563521/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34268714
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13415-021-00928-3
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