Social Cognition and Human Orbital Prefrontal Cortex

描述（由申请人提供）：本提案旨在进一步了解眶前额叶皮层（PFCx）对人类社会行为的贡献。来自认知神经科学的技术将被用于整合社会适应的信息处理理论与情绪对认知的影响理论。将采用神经心理学和高场功能神经成像（4T）方法来研究眼眶PFCx对两个在线预测社会适应的情绪反应的相互作用的贡献：决策和社会刺激的判断。对眼眶PFCx离散性损伤患者的神经心理学研究检查了该区域在社会决策和判断的情感偏见中的参与。健康对照的功能性神经影像学研究将评估在这些任务中是否存在眶PFCx激活的证据。实验方法的目的是提供会聚病变和功能磁共振成像信息的作用，眼眶PFCx的社会行为。拟议的研究借鉴了在以前的研究中广泛使用的引发情绪和检查决策和判断的范例。还将实施经过充分验证的任务，评估易受情绪偏见影响的风险决策和社会行为判断。风险决策将使用风险感知问卷和轮盘赌赌博任务进行评估。社会行为的判断将使用非语言敏感性和面部表情图片集进行评估。拟议的研究代表了这些范式的一种新的应用，因为以前的研究没有试图系统地将这些过程与被认为与社会适应有关的大脑区域的活动联系起来。该提案旨在为开发旨在了解社会行为神经基础的更大研究计划提供基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is designed to further our understanding of the contribution of the orbital prefrontal cortex (PFCx) to human social behavior. Techniques drawn from cognitive neuroscience will be used in an effort to integrate information processing theories of social adjustment with theories of emotional influences on cognition. Neuropsychological and high field functional neuroimaging (4T) approaches will be employed to examine the contribution of orbital PFCx to the interplay of emotional response on two on-line predictors of social adjustment: decision making and judgment of social stimuli. Neuropsychological studies in patients with discrete damage in orbital PFCx examine the involvement of this region in emotional biasing of social decisions and judgments. Functional neuroimaging studies in healthy controls will assess whether there is evidence of activation in orbital PFCx in these tasks. The experimental approach is designed to provide converging lesion and fMRI information on the role of orbital PFCx in social behavior. The proposed research draws on paradigms for eliciting emotion and examining decisions and judgments that have been used extensively in previous research. Well-validated tasks assessing risky decisions and judgments of social behavior that are susceptible to emotional bias will also be implemented. Risky decision making will be assessed using the Perceptions of Risk Questionnaire and a roulette gambling task. Judgments of social behavior will be assessed using the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity and the Pictures of Facial Affect Set. The proposed research represents a novel application of these paradigms because previous studies have not attempted to systematically relate these processes to activity in brain areas felt to be implicated in social adjustment. The proposal is designed to provide a basis for developing a larger program of research aimed at understanding the neural basis of social behavior.