Amygdala Activation Predicts Gaze toward Fearful Eyes
Amygdala Activation Predicts Gaze toward Fearful Eyes
复制标题
DOI：
10.1523/jneurosci.1883-09.2009
复制
发表时间：
2009-07-15
影响因子：
5.3
通讯作者：
Buechel, Christian
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Gamer, Matthias;Buechel, Christian
人类的杏仁核可以通过呈现恐惧的面孔而被强烈激活，据推测，这种激活与将目光重定向到眼睛区域具有功能相关性。为了阐明杏仁核激活和凝视定向行为之间的关系，在本研究中，在面部表情的评价过程中同时获得了功能性磁共振成像数据和眼球运动。恐惧、愤怒、快乐和中性的面孔以事件相关的方式短暂地呈现给健康的志愿者。我们通过在每次试验中不可预测地向下或向上移动面部来控制最初的注视，这样眼睛或嘴巴就呈现在注视中。在情绪表达中，参与者表现出将目光转向眼睛的倾向，但这种影响的程度取决于面部诊断相关区域的分布。杏仁核的活动特别增强了恐惧的面孔与嘴对齐固定，这种差异激活预测凝视行为优先针对眼睛区域。这些结果揭示了杏仁核在对恐惧地睁大的眼睛的反射性凝视启动中的直接作用。它们反映了杏仁核病变患者中观察到的缺陷，并为自闭症谱系障碍患者的未来研究打开了一扇窗，其中观察到情绪识别缺陷，可能与非典型凝视模式和异常杏仁核激活有关。
The human amygdala can be robustly activated by presenting fearful faces, and it has been speculated that this activation has functional relevance for redirecting the gaze toward the eye region. To clarify this relationship between amygdala activation and gaze-orienting behavior, functional magnetic resonance imaging data and eye movements were simultaneously acquired in the current study during the evaluation of facial expressions. Fearful, angry, happy, and neutral faces were briefly presented to healthy volunteers in an event-related manner. We controlled for the initial fixation by unpredictably shifting the faces downward or upward on each trial, such that the eyes or the mouth were presentedat fixation. Across emotional expressions, participants showed a bias to shift their gaze toward the eyes, but the magnitude of this effect followed the distribution of diagnostically relevant regions in the face. Amygdala activity was specifically enhanced for fearful faces with the mouth aligned to fixation, and this differential activation predicted gazing behavior preferentially targeting the eye region. These results reveal a direct role of the amygdala in reflexive gaze initiation toward fearfully widened eyes. They mirror deficits observed in patients with amygdala lesions and open a window for future studies on patients with autism spectrum disorder, in which deficits in emotion recognition, probably related to atypical gaze patterns and abnormal amygdala activation, have been observed.