The Role of the Primate Amygdala in Social and Affective Touch

触摸是我们的第一种情感语言--这种语言使我们能够接受和理解情感 发出信号，帮助为未来的社会纽带奠定基础。尽管人们普遍认识到 触觉在大脑发育以及一生的情感和社交交流中的作用非常少 已经知道了它的细胞神经底物。较新的发现表明，皮肤中含有 用于检测和评估触摸快感的专门技术。目前尚不清楚这些信号是如何 可能是在大脑中处理的。然而，很明显，杏仁核是处理 感官刺激的社会和情感意义，与情态无关。表明这一作用的研究 灵长类动物的杏仁核几乎完全集中在视觉上。最近，我们报告说， 灵长类杏仁核中的触觉反应神经元。我们将对这一初步调查结果进行扩展，并确定 这些触觉反应细胞如何对触觉刺激的基本感觉特征做出反应：定位和 强度(目标1)。接下来，我们将确定杏仁核中的触觉细胞是否编码主观的 触觉的价值(目标2)。鉴于杏仁核在处理社会刺激中的重要作用，我们将 确定触觉的社会维度如何影响触觉细胞的活动(目标3)。具体来说， 我们将同时监测杏仁核和躯体感觉皮质对触摸的神经反应 并将传递到相同皮肤区域的相同类型的社交触摸的神经反应进行两次比较 与接受者有不同社会体验的个人。我们预计触觉细胞在 杏仁核，但不是在躯体感觉皮质，以区分社会伴侣，支持 杏仁核提取刺激的社会情感维度(价值)的想法。总的来说，这三个人 AIMS提供了一种全新的、技术先进的生理学框架 理解灵长类杏仁核对触觉刺激的反应和评估 主观价值和社会意义。理解人与人之间情感接触的细胞学机制 灵长类动物的大脑有望为为什么触摸处理如此深刻地提供重要的见解 在功能性疼痛综合症、自闭症和许多其他精神障碍中发生改变。

Touch is our first emotional language – the language that allows us to receive and understand affective signals and help lay the foundation for future social bonds. Despite the widely recognized importance of touch in brain development and in affective and social communication throughout life, remarkably little is known about its cellular neural substrate. Relatively recent discoveries showed that the skin contains specializations for detecting and evaluating the pleasantness of touch. It is unclear how these signals might be processed in the brain. It is clear, however, that the amygdala is required for processing the social and emotional significance of sensory stimuli, regardless of modality. Studies that showed this role of the primate amygdala focused almost exclusively on vision. Recently we have reported the presence of touch-responsive neurons in the primate amygdala. We will expand on this initial finding and determine how these touch-responsive cells respond to the basic sensory features of tactile stimuli: location and intensity (Aim 1). Next, we will determine whether tactile cells in the amygdala encode the subjective value of touch (Aim 2). Given the important role of the amygdala in processing social stimuli, we will then determine how the social dimension of touch factors into the activity of tactile cells (Aim 3). Specifically, we will simultaneously monitor neural responses to touch in the amygdala and somatosensory cortex and compare neural responses to the same type of social touch, delivered to the same skin area, by two individuals with whom the recipient has a different social experience. We expect tactile cells in the amygdala, but not in the somatosensory cortex, to discriminate between social partners, supporting the idea that the amygdala extracts the social-affective dimension (value) of stimuli. Collectively, these three aims provide a conceptually new and technically advanced physiological framework for understanding how the primate amygdala responds to and evaluates tactile stimuli that vary in subjective value and social significance. Understanding the cellular machinery of affective touch in the primate brain is expected to provide important insights into why touch processing is so profoundly altered in functional pain syndromes, autism, and numerous other mental disorders.