Frontal cortical interactions during decision-making and social valuation

心理疾病影响着英国和其他国家的许多人。许多疾病，如自闭症、抑郁症和强迫症，都与社会互动的改变和决策模式的改变有关。例如，抑郁症通常与社会互动价值的降低以及在做出决定和选择下一步行动时对负面反馈的过度重视有关。在这类疾病中，变化不仅发生在行为层面，还发生在大脑层面。两个区域可能特别重要——前额皮质和前扣带皮层（PFC和ACC）。目前尚不清楚的是，大脑的变化如何以及是否会导致行为层面的变化。建议使用动物模型，在PFC和ACC的小区域诱导功能障碍。然后可以通过仔细测量行为来评估功能障碍的影响。这些变化是如何发生的可以通过使用两种类型的脑成像技术来评估。第一种脑成像方法叫做弥散加权成像它观察PFC和ACC与其他大脑区域的相互联系模式并告诉我们大脑内PFC和ACC到达并影响其他大脑区域从而影响行为的途径。这种联系途径正日益成为治疗最严重形式的心理疾病的医学尝试的焦点。第二种脑成像方法被称为功能性磁共振成像，它测量大脑的活动水平。通过测量其他大脑区域的活动水平，可以确定PFC和ACC功能障碍对其他大脑区域工作的影响。如果这些变化被发现，那么它表明PFC和ACC的微小初始变化可能会对大脑其他部分的工作方式产生更广泛的影响。这可能反过来揭示决策模式和社会互动是如何在心理疾病期间发生变化的。

Psychological illnesses affect many people in the UK and other countries. Many illnesses, such as autism, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder are associated with changes in social interaction and altered patterns of decision-making. For example, depression is often associated with a decrease in the value given to social interaction and with the allocation of undue weight to negative feedback when making a decision and choosing what to do next. In such illnesses changes do not just occur at the behavioural level, they also occur at the level of the brain. Two regions may be particularly important – prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex (PFC and ACC). What is not clear is how and whether the brain changes lead to changes at the behavioural level. The proposal is to use animal models in which dysfunction is induced in small regions of PFC and ACC. The effect of dysfunction can then be assessed by taking careful measurements of behaviour. How the changes occur can be assessed by using two types of brain imaging techniques. The first brain imaging approach is called diffusion weighted imaging and it looks at the interconnexion patterns of the PFC and ACC with other brain areas and tells us the routes within the brain by which the PFC and ACC reach and influence other brain areas and thereby affect behaviour. Such connexion routes are increasingly becoming the focus for medical attempts to treat the most severe forms of psychological illness. The second brain imaging approach is called functional magnetic resonance imaging and it measures activity levels in the brain. By measuring the activity levels in other brain areas it is possible to ascertain the impact of dysfunction in PFC and ACC on the working of those other brain areas. If such changes are found then it suggests that small initial changes in PFC and ACC can have wider consequences for how the rest of the brain works. This may in turn reveal how patterns of decision-making and social interaction come to change during psychological illnesses.