Perception of Threatening Intention Modulates Brain Processes to Body Actions: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

Overview

Journal Front Psychol

Date 2018 Dec 13

PMID 30538648

Citations 3

Authors

Guan Wang

Pei Wang

Junlong Luo

Wenya Nan

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Efficiently perceiving a threatening intention conveyed by others' bodily actions has great survival value. The current study examined if the human brain is sensitive to differences in intentions that are conveyed via bodily actions. For this purpose, a new intention categorization task was developed in which participants sat in front of a computer screen on which the pictures of highly threatening (HT), moderately threatening (MT), and non-threatening (NT) body actions were presented randomly. Participants were asked to press the corresponding buttons using threatening intention judgment, while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. According to a cluster permutation test, we analyzed N190, N2, EPP (early posterior positivity), and P3. The results showed there was a positive correlation between the amplitude of the EPP induced by three kinds of body actions and the reaction time of the task. The results also revealed that when the deflection of EPP was less positive, the reaction time was shorter. We suggest that EPP might be useful as an index of body intention processing of the brain. The current study revealed that intention perception of body actions modulates brain processing.

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