Crossmodal binding of fear in voice and face

In social environments, multiple sensory channels are simultaneously engage d in the service of communication. In this experiment, we were concerned wi th defining the neuronal mechanisms for a perceptual bias in processing sim ultaneously presented emotional voices and faces. Specifically, we were int erested in how bimodal presentation of a fearful voice facilitates recognit ion of fearful facial expression. By using event-related functional MRI, th at crossed sensory modality (visual or auditory) with emotional expression (fearful or happy), we show that perceptual facilitation during face fear p rocessing is expressed through modulation of neuronal responses in the amyg dala and the fusiform cortex. These data suggest that the amygdala is impor tant for emotional crossmodal sensory convergence with the associated perce ptual bias during fear processing, being mediated by task-related modulatio n of face-processing regions of fusiform cortex.