Architectural experience influences the processing of others' body expressions

Abstract

The interplay between space and cognition is a crucial issue in Neuroscience leading to the development of multiple research fields. However, the relationship between architectural space and the movement of the inhabitants and their interactions has been too often neglected, failing to provide a unifying view of architecture's capacity to modulate social cognition broadly. We bridge this gap by requesting participants to judge avatars' emotional expression (high vs. low arousal) at the end of their promenade inside high- or low-arousing architectures. Stimuli were presented in virtual reality to ensure a dynamic, naturalistic experience. High-density electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded to assess the neural responses to the avatar's presentation. Observing highly aroused avatars increased Late Positive Potentials (LPP), in line with previous evidence. Strikingly, 250 ms before the occurrence of the LPP, P200 amplitude increased due to the experience of low-arousing architectures, reflecting an early greater attention during the processing of body expressions. In addition, participants stared longer at the avatar's head and judged the observed posture as more arousing. Source localization highlighted a contribution of the dorsal premotor cortex to both P200 and LPP. In conclusion, the immersive and dynamic architectural experience modulates human social cognition. In addition, the motor system plays a role in processing architecture and body expressions suggesting that the space and social cognition interplay is rooted in overlapping neural substrates. This study demonstrates that the manipulation of mere architectural space is sufficient to influence human social cognition.

Keywords: EEG; architectural cognition; emotional body expressions; premotor cortex; virtual reality.

Fig. 1.

Representation of the experimental trials and virtual stimuli. (A) Schematic representation of two experimental trials. The upper (Lower) panels, from left to right, show three first-person perspectives of the low (high) arousing architecture, corresponding to the participants’ view at the start of the promenade, at the end of the first nucleus, and at the end of the second one. The last frame corresponds to the presentation of the avatar in the third nucleus. (B) Virtual environments with low/high arousing forms (columns) in the cold/warm colored version (rows). (C) Example of avatars with low-, middle-, and high-arousing body posture, respectively. The transparent background is to highlight the body posture and represent the final nucleus of the low-arousing architecture.

Fig. 2.

Topographic and ERP activations related to the distinct neural temporal dynamics processing architecture and body characteristics. (A) The left pictures represent the topographic voltage distributions of the LPP (452 to 1,000 ms) to the presentation of avatars with high- and low-arousing body postures. The right pictures represent the grand average ERPs for the high- (blue) and low-arousing (red) body posture conditions. (B) The left pictures represent the topographic voltage distribution of the P200 (168 to 384 ms) to the presentation of avatars within low- and high-arousing form. The right pictures represent the grand average ERPs for low- (blue) and high-arousing (red) architecture conditions. Figures within the blue and red frames below the scalp maps highlight the corresponding experimental conditions. The ERPs were averaged across the electrodes defining the significant cluster, highlighted with black dots on the topographic map in the figure Inset (colormap codes the t-statistic, cluster-based corrected). The SE is presented as light shadows of the corresponding color. The significant time interval is defined by back asterisks.

Fig. 3.

Cortical maps related to the overlapping motor activation for architecture and body characteristics. (A) The left pictures represent the two cortical maps of current density averaged in the 600 to 660 ms interval elicited by the presentation of avatars with high- and low-arousing body postures. The right picture shows the significant dipoles revealed by the corresponding statistical comparison within the cortical map. (B) The left figures represent the two cortical maps of the current density averaged in the 220 to 280 ms interval elicited by the presentation of avatars within the low- and high-arousing architecture. The right picture shows the significant dipoles revealed by the corresponding statistical comparison. The colormaps code the distribution of current density and the corresponding t statistic.

Fig. 4.

Increased FTs to body postures after the dynamic experience of low-arousing architecture. Panel A shows the time course of FTs on avatar’s ROIs with high- (Left) and low-arousing (Middle) body postures. Panel B shows the time course of FTs on avatar’s ROIs within the low- (Left) and high-arousing (Middle) architecture. For the left and central panels, the color of each time bin codes the time spent staring at the ROI, z-scored with respect to the empty control condition. In the right panel, the statistical comparison between the two conditions is presented: The color of each time bin represents the t-statistic, and black asterisks identify the significant clusters within each ROI.