Emotions in time and space: The functional role of basic emotions in reading

该项目旨在了解基本情绪在阅读中的功能作用。这项工作的主要兴趣是更深入地了解所有哺乳动物中处理基本情绪的遗传学古老的大脑结构（例如，大脑皮层（英语：Cortex）活跃地参与高级认知技能，如语言，这是人类特有的，主要存在于大脑皮层的最近部分。虽然一些现有的大脑成像研究显示了经典情感大脑区域和阅读之间的联系，但这些研究并没有表明基本情感的处理发生在单词感知的第一阶段，并且是识别这些单词所必需的。本研究的目的是证明视觉词识别中的初级情绪区的激活是早期的和功能性的。为此，我们将在这两个国家使用经颅磁刺激（TMS），这是一种通过干扰健康参与者在局部和时间上精确的皮层刺激后的行为来建立因果脑行为关系的工具。在德国，重复TMS将与功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）相结合，以研究局灶性“虚拟病变”对全脑活动（BOLD反应）的影响，以及对受试者在阅读过程中行为表现的影响。在法国，单脉冲经颅磁刺激将与脑电图（EEG）相结合，以研究词知觉中情绪处理的时间过程。该项目的优势在于它汇集了来自不同领域的专家，共同研究一个问题，即基本情绪对阅读的作用。虽然这是一个创新和技术上的挑战，但合作伙伴的高水平能力和互补技能使这个项目非常可行。预期的结果是独特的，并对心理学和情感神经科学感兴趣。

This project aims at understanding the functional role of basic emotions in reading. The main interest of this work is in gaining deeper insights into how phylogenetically ancient brain structures that process basic emotions in all mammals (e.g., the insula) actively participate in high-level cognitive skills, such as language, that are specific to humans and mainly hosted in the most recent parts of the cortex. While a few existing brain imaging studies show associations between classic emotion brain regions and reading, such studies do not show that the processing of basic emotions occurs in the first stages of word perception and is necessary to the recognition of these words. The goal of the present study is to show that the activation of primary emotion areas in visual word recognition is early and functional. For that, we will use in both countries Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a tool that makes it possible to establish causal brain-behavior relations by disturbing the behavior of healthy participants following local and temporally precise cortical stimulation. In Germany, repetitive TMS will be combined with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to investigate the effects of focal “virtual lesions” on the activity of the whole brain (BOLD response) and on the behavioral performance of the subjects during reading. In France, single pulse TMS will be combined with ElectroEncephaloGraphy (EEG) to investigate the time course of emotional processing in word perception. The strength of the project is that it brings together experts from different fields to work on a single question, the role of basic emotions on reading. Although this is innovative and technically challenging, the high level of competence and the complementary skills of the partners make this project highly feasible. The anticipated outcomes are unique and of major interest to Psychology and Affective Neuroscience.