emotionotopy

Humans use emotions to decipher complex cascades of internal events. However, which
mechanisms link descriptions of affective states to brain activity is unclear, with evidence
supporting either local or distributed processing. A biologically favorable alternative is provided by
the notion of gradient, which postulates the isomorphism between functional representations of
stimulus features and cortical distance. Here, we use fMRI activity evoked by an emotionally
charged movie and continuous ratings of the perceived emotion intensity to reveal the topographic
organization of affective states. Results show that three orthogonal and spatially overlapping
gradients encode the polarity, complexity and intensity of emotional experiences in right temporo-
parietal territories. The spatial arrangement of these gradients allows the brain to map a variety of
affective states within a single patch of cortex. As this organization resembles how sensory regions
represent psychophysical properties (e.g., retinotopy), we propose emotionotopy as a principle of
emotion coding.

人类借助情感来解析错综复杂的内部事件序列。然而，将情感状态的描述与大脑活动相联系的具体机制尚不明确，现有的证据既支持局部处理也支持分布式处理。梯度这一生物学的替代概念提供了一个有利的选择，它提出了刺激特征的功能表征与皮质距离之间的同构性。在本研究中，我们利用由情感电影激发的fMRI活动以及感知到的情感强度连续评分，揭示了情感状态的空间组织结构。研究结果表明，三个相互垂直且空间上重叠的梯度编码了情感体验的极性、复杂性和强度，这些梯度位于右侧的颞顶叶区域。这些梯度的空间排列使得大脑能够在单个皮质区域中映射多种情感状态。由于这种组织方式与感觉区域表征心理物理属性（例如，视网膜拓扑）的方式相似，我们提出情感拓扑作为情感编码的原则。