Lateral Prefrontal Cortex Mediates the Cognitive Modification of Attentional Bias
Lateral Prefrontal Cortex Mediates the Cognitive Modification of Attentional Bias
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DOI：
10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.10.031
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发表时间：
2010-05-15
影响因子：
10.6
通讯作者：
Harmer, Catherine J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Browning, Michael;Holmes, Emily A.;Harmer, Catherine J.
背景：将注意力转向威胁性刺激的倾向可能与焦虑症的病因有关。与此相一致的是，焦虑的心理和药物治疗都能减少这种消极的注意偏差。这是一种假设，但尚未得到证实，心理干预可能会改变监督注意力资源分配的前额叶区域的功能。方法：目前的研究考察了认知训练制度对注意力的影响。参与者被随机分配到两种训练条件中的一种：“出席-威胁”训练，这种训练增加了负性注意偏见，或者“避免-威胁”训练，这种训练减少了负性注意偏见。训练的行为效果是用24名健康参与者的样本来评估的。在另外29名健康志愿者中收集了功能性磁共振成像数据，使用了一种允许区分刺激效价和注意力影响的方案。结果：认知训练诱导了健康志愿者的预期注意偏差。此外，训练改变了侧额叶对情绪刺激的激活，这些区域专门对违反训练期间学到的行为规则做出反应。连通性分析证实，识别的侧额叶区域影响了视觉关联皮层的活动。结论：我们的研究结果表明，对情绪刺激处理的额叶控制可能通过心理干预以一种预测的方式调节焦虑水平。这直接支持了心理干预可能通过对前额皮质的影响来影响注意力的建议。
Background: A tendency to orient attention toward threatening stimuli may be involved in the etiology of anxiety disorders. In keeping with this, both psychological and pharmacological treatments of anxiety reduce this negative attentional bias. It has been hypothesized, but not proved, that psychological interventions may alter the function of prefrontal regions supervising the allocation of attentional resources.Methods: The current study examined the effects of a cognitive training regime on attention. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two training conditions: "attend-threat" training, which increases negative attentional bias, or "avoid-threat" training, which reduces it. The behavioral effects of training were assessed using a sample of 24 healthy participants. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected in a further 29 healthy volunteers using a protocol that allowed the influence of both stimuli valence and attention to be discriminated.Results: Cognitive training induced the expected attentional biases in healthy volunteers. Further, the training altered lateral frontal activation to emotional stimuli, with these areas responding specifically to violations of the behavioral rules learned during training. Connectivity analysis confirmed that the identified lateral frontal regions were influencing attention as indexed by activity in visual association cortex.Conclusions: Our results indicate that frontal control over the processing of emotional stimuli may be tuned by psychological interventions in a manner predicted to regulate levels of anxiety. This directly supports the proposal that psychological interventions may influence attention via an effect on the prefrontal cortex.