ORIGINAL ARTICLE Common and specific brain responses to scenic emotional stimuli Joaquim Radua • Salvador Sarro ´ • Teresa Vigo • Silvia Alonso-Lana • C. Mar Bonnı ´n • Jordi Ortiz-Gil • Erick J. Canales-Rodrı ´guez • Teresa Maristany • Eduard Vieta • Peter J. Mckenna • Raymond Salvador • Edith Pomarol-Clotet Received: 15 November 2012 / Accepted: 10 May 2013 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Abstract Processing of emotions has been an enduring topic of interest in neuroimaging research, but studies have mostly used facial emotional stimuli. The aim of this study was to determine neural networks involved in emotion processing using scenic emotional visual stimuli. One hundred and twenty photographs from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), including ecological scenes of disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness, were pre- sented to 40 healthy participants while they underwent functional magnetic imaging resonance (fMRI). After- wards they evaluated the emotional content of the pictures in an offline task. The occipito-temporal cortex and the amygdala–hippocampal complex showed a non-specific emotion-related activation, which was more marked in response to negative emotions than to happiness. The temporo-parietal cortex and the ventral anterior cingulate gyrus showed deactivation, with the former being marked for all emotions except fear and the latter being most marked for disgust. The fusiform gyrus showed activation in response to disgust and deactivation in response to happiness or sadness. Brain regions involved in processing of scenic emotion therefore resemble those reported for facial expressions of emotion in that they respond to a range of different emotions, although there appears to be specificity in the intensity and direction of the response. Keywords Amygdala Á Anterior cingulate gyrus Á Emotion Á Functional magnetic resonance imaging Á Fusiform gyrus Introduction Processing of emotional stimuli has been a topic of con- siderable interest in functional imaging research. Thus, a recent meta-analysis that used functional magnetic reso- nance imaging (fMRI) to investigate brain responses to facial emotions found 377 studies carried out between 1990 and 2008 (Fusar-Poli et al. 2009). An important finding of this meta-analysis was that different emotions (e.g., hap- piness or fear) appear to be associated with activation of the same brain regions (e.g., the amygdala and the fusiform gyrus), although probably at different intensities. Several further studies have also supported the involvement of a common emotional network involving limbic and visual regions in the processing of emotional faces in a relatively non-specific way (Surguladze et al. 2012; Winston et al. 2003; Tettamanti et al. 2012). It should be noted, however, that the strategy used in the above studies amalgamates brain responses associated with J. Radua (&) Á S. Sarro ´ Á T. Vigo Á S. Alonso-Lana Á J. Ortiz-Gil Á E. J. Canales-Rodrı ´guez Á P. J. Mckenna Á R. Salvador Á E. Pomarol-Clotet FIDMAG Research Unit, Benito Menni CASM, Carrer d’Antoni Pujadas 38, Sant Boi de Llobregat, 08830 Barcelona, Spain e-mail: joaquim.radua@kcl.ac.uk J. Radua Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, London, UK J. Radua Á S. Sarro ´ Á S. Alonso-Lana Á C. M. Bonnı ´n Á J. Ortiz-Gil Á E. J. Canales-Rodrı ´guez Á T. Maristany Á E. Vieta Á P. J. Mckenna Á R. Salvador Á E. Pomarol-Clotet Centro de Investigacio ´n Biome ´dica en Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Madrid, Spain T. Vigo Á P. J. Mckenna Benito Menni Complex Assistencial en Salut Mental, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain C. M. Bonnı ´n Á E. Vieta Hospital Clinic Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain 123 Brain Struct Funct DOI 10.1007/s00429-013-0580-0