HUMAN AMYGDALA-LIMBIC LESIONS AND EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR

情感障碍是人类痛苦和残疾的主要原因，但情感是研究最少的生物现象之一。几十年的动物研究表明，杏仁核系统的损伤是情绪行为变化的原因，但这些研究并没有完全解释人类情绪体验的复杂性和丰富性。本研究将研究单纯疱疹脑炎（HSE）或颞叶切除术（TLE）引起的杏仁核和相关边缘区域的获得性病变如何影响情绪行为。该项目的具体目标是确定杏仁核病变对以下方面的影响：1)情绪反应系统（即自我报告、行为和心理生理学），2)食欲和厌恶动机系统（即情绪效价），以及3)对标准情感唤起照片的记忆。这个项目将是第一个使用标准范式和规范的情绪刺激来检查杏仁核病变患者的这些区域的项目。我的愿景是利用NRSA奖学金来收集数据，为更好地理解情绪和记忆的潜在机制提供相关信息。我计划使用从这项研究中收集的数据来提交未来的NIH R01拨款，该拨款将集中在进一步描述涉及情绪处理和记忆的神经系统上。识别情绪行为中关键的、相互作用的神经系统将有助于更好地干预衰弱的心理状况。

Disorders of emotion are a leading cause of human suffering and disability, yet emotion is one of the least studied biological phenomena. Decades of animal studies have demonstrated that damage to amygdala systems is responsible for changes in emotional behavior, but these studies have not fully accounted for the complexity and richness of human emotional experience. This study will examine how acquired lesions of the amygdala and associated limbic areas caused by either herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE) or temporal lobectomy (TLE) affect emotional behavior. The specific aims of this project are to determine the impact of amygdala lesions on: 1) emotional response systems (i.e., self-report, behavior, and psychophysiology), 2) appetitive and aversive motivational systems (i.e., emotional valence) and 3) memory for standard emotionally evocative photographs. This project will be among the first to examine these areas in amygdala lesioned patients using a standard paradigm and normative emotionally-laden stimuli. My vision is to utilize an NRSA Fellowship to collect data that will provide information relevant to better understanding the underlying mechanisms of emotion and memory. I plan to use the data collected from this study to submit a future NIH R01 grant that will focus on further delineation of the neural systems involved in emotional processing and memory. Identification of the crucial, interacting neural systems in emotional behavior will lead to better interventions for debilitating psychological conditions.