Understanding how our brain interprets social hierarchy or facial emotions may be key to advancing our knowledge of anxiety and mood disorders. This is the aim of the project led by researcher Maya Visser at the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló, which studies the role of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in the brain network that gives meaning to social and emotional concepts.
The anterior temporal lobe (ATL) has traditionally been understudied due to the geometric distortions produced in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which have hindered accurate analysis of this region. However, previous studies by the NFN group at the Universitat Jaume I have used specific techniques to overcome these limitations and have demonstrated the ATL's involvement in processing meaning and in making social and emotional decisions.
The project, funded by the 2021 National Plan for Scientific Research, studies how the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) communicates with other brain regions, such as the frontal and limbic areas, when we interpret social situations or express emotions. In addition, it investigates how this network of connections may change in people with varying levels of subclinical anxiety — that is, anxiety levels not reaching the threshold for a formal diagnosis but still capable of affecting brain function.
So far, preliminary analyses of the project have shown that the upper part of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is strongly activated when individuals interpret social hierarchies or make decisions based on emotional facial expressions. It has also been observed that this brain region shows greater activation in people with high levels of anxiety, possibly because anxiety is associated with negative affect during the interpretation of social concepts — such as feelings of inferiority when seeing a winner or intense guilt when making mistakes. In such cases, the collaboration between the semantic system (located in the ATL) and the emotional system is disrupted. These findings have already been published and are currently under review by specialized scientific journals.
Despite the promising results, important steps remain. It is necessary to complete the analyses of functional and structural connections between different brain regions, such as the uncinate fasciculus, which connects the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) with the orbitofrontal cortex and may play a key role in processing anxiety and guilt. Additionally, as a methodological challenge, efforts are being made to obtain a gender-balanced sample to allow for accurate analysis of gender differences.
Maya Visser is a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Department of Basic and Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology at the Universitat Jaume I. Over her career, she has participated in neuroimaging projects at research centres in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain, focusing her research on the role of semantic processing in social and emotional behaviours. She is part of the Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging (NFN) research group, an interdisciplinary team that studies brain mechanisms in both healthy and clinical populations by combining neuroimaging techniques with experimental designs, applying results to fields such as psychology, neurology, education and marketing.
With this initiative, the Universitat Jaume I reaffirms its commitment to research that combines a fundamental understanding of the human brain with a direct impact on mental health. Projects like this help us better understand how we think, feel and live together, and they open new perspectives for addressing emotional disorders from the roots of thought and meaning.
This research is part of project PID2021-127516NB-I00, funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and FEDER/UE.
Project articles:
González-García, I.; Visser, M. A Semantic Cognition Contribution to Mood and Anxiety Disorder Pathophysiology. Healthcare 2023, 11, 821. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/healthcare11060821
M. R. Zareba, T. Davydova, M.-Á. Palomar-García, J. Adrián-Ventura, V. Costumero, Maya V., Subjective sleep quality in healthy young adults moderates associations of sensitivity to punishment and reward with functional connectivity of regions relevant for insomnia disorder, Sleep Med. 2025, 131: 106527, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2025.106527
Michal Rafal Zareba, Krzysztof Bielski, Victor Costumero, Maya Visser, Graph analysis of guilt processing network highlights links with subclinical anxiety and self-blame, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Volume 19, Issue 1, 2024, nsae092, https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsae092
