Crossmodal binding of fear in voice and face

Abstract

In social environments, multiple sensory channels are simultaneously engaged in the service of communication. In this experiment, we were concerned with defining the neuronal mechanisms for a perceptual bias in processing simultaneously presented emotional voices and faces. Specifically, we were interested in how bimodal presentation of a fearful voice facilitates recognition of fearful facial expression. By using event-related functional MRI, that crossed sensory modality (visual or auditory) with emotional expression (fearful or happy), we show that perceptual facilitation during face fear processing is expressed through modulation of neuronal responses in the amygdala and the fusiform cortex. These data suggest that the amygdala is important for emotional crossmodal sensory convergence with the associated perceptual bias during fear processing, being mediated by task-related modulation of face-processing regions of fusiform cortex.