Sixfold symmetry pattern found in the brain during emotion assessment — ScienceAlert

Neuroscientists have identified a pattern of activity with sixfold symmetry in the human brain during the assessment of emotional information. The signal was recorded in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex — it is consistent with the assumption that the brain may use a grid system to organize emotional concepts, ScienceAlert reports.

Emotions on a two-dimensional map

Researchers Yumen Ma and Philip A. Kragel of Emory University analyzed functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 18 participants. They were shown facial expressions that gradually changed from one emotion to another, as well as sequences of phrases with emotional content.

The stimuli were designed to represent movement in a two-dimensional space of emotions. In it, one dimension is valence, meaning the pleasantness or unpleasantness of an experience, while the other is the level of arousal, from calming to activating. For example, contentment and excitement can both be positive emotions but differ in their level of activation.

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The signal did not depend on the type of stimulus

Brain activity changed depending on the direction of the transition between emotional states and repeated according to a pattern of sixfold symmetry. Similar principles have previously been associated with so-called grid cells, which help the brain navigate physical space.

The pattern appeared both when assessing faces and when reading phrases. According to the study's authors, this may indicate that the brain encoded relationships between emotional concepts rather than merely reacting to visual or textual stimuli. The researchers also found a link between brain activity, the distance between emotions on this map, and participants' assessments of changes in emotional information.

The authors emphasize that the sample was small, so further research is needed to determine how such a mechanism works and its role in emotion processing. The work was published in the journal PLOS Biology.