BRAIN-REGIONS INVOLVED IN RECOGNIZING FACIAL EMOTION OR IDENTITY - ANO-15 PET STUDY

The functional neuroanatomy of emotion recognition is inadequately und erstood despite well-documented clinical situations where emotion reco gnition is impaired (aprosodia). Oxygen-15 water positron-emission tom ography (PET) was used to study 9 healthy women volunteers during thre e match-to-sample conditions, each repeated twice: a study task matchi ng facial emotions and control tasks matching spatial positions or fac ial identity. Results suggest that the higher order functional neural network for recognizing emotion in visual input likely involves the ri ght anterior cingulate and the bilateral inferior frontal gyri.