Especially in females, the processing of chemosensory anxiety signals requires more neuronal activity than the processing of body odor donated in an emotionally neutral condition.
The intense neuronal processing of body odor signals in females was accompanied by a differential response to the two chemosensory stimuli within the P3 latency range.
Given that diving is closed-loop motor skills attaching importance to spatial information processing of body movement, changes are anticipated in parahippocampal gyrus, which was shown to be involved in acquiring spatial information.
Thereby, the results are in line with recent brain imaging studies [11], [12], demonstrating that the processing of chemosensory anxiety or stress signals requires more neuronal resources than the processing of body odor signals sampled in a non-emotional control condition.
According to this account "online processing of body-related multisensory information in the brain is more like ongoing puzzle solving of which the normally experienced embodied self-location is just a fragile and only temporarily stable solution, which is a setting that is naturally suited for the Bayesian approach to sensory information processing" [17].
Crucially, our results suggest that common neural mechanisms support infant and adult processing of body-related stimuli.
Similarly, the magnitude of automatic processing of body-related words is likely to be influenced by individual differences in body weight and shape concerns.
Much of this research, however, has utilised relatively long stimulus exposure times; thereby focusing on effortful and conscious processing of body-related stimuli.
Cognitive models of body image disturbance predict that females who possess detailed mental representations of their body image (called body image schemas) will demonstrate more automatic processing of body-related stimuli [e.g., [ 28, 29]].
These findings, together with the evidence for automatic affective processing of body-related images [ 38], suggest that affective responses are likely to be triggered in most young females by a variety of body-related concepts, which are often only briefly encountered.
