The Enigmatic temporal pole: a review of findings on social and emotional processing.

By Ingrid R. Olson, Alan Plotzker, Youssef Ezzyat. Brain : a journal of neurology, 2007

1,380 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The function of the anterior-most portion of the temporal lobes, the temporal pole, is not well understood. Anatomists have long considered it part of an extended limbic system based on its location posterior to the orbital frontal cortex and lateral to the amygdala, along with its tight connectivity to limbic and paralimbic regions. Here we review the literature in both non-human primates and humans to assess the temporal pole's putative role in social and emotional processing. Reviewed findings indicate that it has some role in both social and emotional processes, including face recognition and theory of mind, that goes beyond semantic memory. We propose that the temporal pole binds complex, highly processed perceptual inputs to visceral emotional responses. Because perceptual inputs remain segregated into dorsal (auditory), medial (olfactory) and ventral (visual) streams, the integration of emotion with perception is channel specific.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sensory Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5df5ddb7969cb45cccda578e2551bff3a989e38e

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Citations in the corpus

The neural bases of social cognition and story comprehension. (2011, background): “…proposed functions more in keeping with social processing, such as face processing (Mesulam 1998, Seeck et al. 1993), the storage of social concepts (Zahn et al. 2007), or the processing of social semantic knowledge (Ross & Olson 2010, Simmons et al. 2010) (for a review, see Olson et al. 2007).”
Dissecting the uncinate fasciculus: disorders, controversies and a hypothesis. (2013, background): “Portions of the anterior temporal lobe (but not the temporal pole) are believed to play a role in certain types of semantic memory (Patterson et al., 2007) and also in the encoding and storage of social and emotional concepts (Olson et al., 2007, 2013; Zahn et al., 2007; Simmons et al., 2010).”
The hippocampus and memory: insights from spatial processing (2008, background): “Indeed, experimental evidence suggests that the fusiform gyrus, the perirhinal cortex and the temporal pole might be crucial for face-recognition memor”
Functional imaging studies of emotion regulation: A synthetic review and evolving model of the cognitive control of emotion (2012, neutral): “…cues to emotion like movements of lips and eyes 122-124 ; temporal polar regions implicated in representing episodic and semantic emotion knowledge 125 ; and regions near the temporal-parietal junction involved in representations of beliefs, including “false” beliefs of the sort one generates…”
Evaluative and generative modes of thought during the creative process (2012, background): “The temporopolar cortex, meanwhile, may bind complex perceptual input to visceral, emotional input from the anterior insula and amygdala (Olson et al., 2007).”
Having a word with yourself: Neural correlates of self-criticism and self-reassurance (2010, background): “The temporal pole receives projections from the insula, but additionally has strong connections with both the amygdala and OFC; thus it is often referred to as a paralimbic region (see Olson et al., 2007 for review).”
Semantic Processing in the Anterior Temporal Lobes: A Meta-analysis of the Functional Neuroimaging Literature (2010, background): “A similar divergence between pictures and auditory stimuli (including speech) in the ATL was noted in a meta-analysis by Olson, Plotzker, and Ezzyat ( 2007 ), focussed on social and emotional processing.”
The development of emotion regulation: an fMRI study of cognitive reappraisal in children, adolescents and young adults. (2012, background): “While increasing attention has been paid to reappraisal in adults, little is known about how this adaptive ability develops over the course of adolescence.”
Identifying major depression using whole-brain functional connectivity: a multivariate pattern analysis. (2012, background): “The affective network in which the amygdala and temporal poles exhibit the greatest region weights is particularly involved in the relationship of emotion/mood to visceral function (Ongür et al., 2003; Olson et al., 2007; Ding et al., 2009).”
The wandering brain: Meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies of mind-wandering and related spontaneous thought processes (2015, positive): “Although relatively poorly understood compared to other neocortical regions, the temporopolar cortex appears to play a strong role in integrated emotional processing involving visceral responses, as well as ‘theory of mind’ (or mentalizing) (Olson et al., 2007).”