Prefrontal-amygdala interactions in social learning

描述（由申请人提供）：该R 01申请提出对人类受试者使用功能性神经成像来阐明前额叶-杏仁核回路在预测不同社会结果的面部表情处理中的作用。 在神经影像学研究中，面部表情的呈现被证明是激活杏仁核和前额叶区域的特别强大的刺激，这些区域参与处理生物相关的社会线索。 此外，这些任务已被证明可用于揭示患有各种情绪障碍（例如，焦虑、抑郁）。 在这里，我们建议进一步开发面部表情任务用于特定的精神病理学障碍。 这项工作的效用是，它将提供一个更好的理解的基本规则，决定杏仁核反应（目标1），让我们更好地了解如何杏仁核与连接的前额叶区相互作用时，遇到这样的表达（目标2），并把这种社会/情感的人类工作，以更大的巴甫洛夫条件反射工作，这显示了阐明焦虑症中恐惧学习及其畸变的神经基础的特别希望（目的3）。 这里提出的实验对于建立对人类大脑对重要社会线索的反应的正常模式的理解至关重要，以便允许未来的发展研究（即，儿童和青少年）以及直接转化为临床人群。 大脑中一个叫做杏仁核的区域对他人的面部表情特别敏感，并且已经证明，焦虑症患者对恐惧的面部表情表现出过度的反应。 这可能是焦虑症患者对潜在威胁的警惕性和反应过度的症状的部分原因。 本文提出的研究将进一步加深我们对这些大脑对面部表情的反应的理解，并为未来研究焦虑症的大脑反应提供改进的人脑成像任务。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This R01 application proposes to use functional neuroimaging with human subjects to elucidate the role of prefrontal-amygdala circuitry in the processing of facial expressions that predict different social outcomes. Presentations of facial expressions of emotion in neuroimaging studies have proven particularly robust stimuli for activating amygdala and prefrontal regions involved in processing biologically-relevant social cues. Further, these tasks have proven useful for revealing aberrant brain activation patterns in patients with various emotional disorders (e.g., anxiety, depression). Here we propose to further develop facial expression tasks for use with specific psychopathological disorders. The utility of this work is that it will provide for a better understanding of the basic rules that determine amygdala response (Aim 1), allow us to better understand how the amygdala interacts with reciprocally connected prefrontal areas when such expressions are encountered (Aim 2) and tie this social/emotional human work to the greater Pavlovian conditioning work, which shows particular promise for elucidating the neural substrates of fear learning and its aberrations in anxiety disorders (Aim 3). The experiments proposed here are critical for establishing an understanding of the normal pattern of human brain responsivity to important social cues in order to allow future developmental research (i.e., with children and adolescents) as well as direct translation to clinical populations. An area of the brain called the amygdala is particularly responsive to the facial expressions of others and has been shown to exhibit exaggerated reactivity to the facial expression of fear in subjects with anxiety disorders. This may, in part, underlie the symptoms of increased vigilance and hyper-reactivity to potential threat that plague individuals with anxiety disorders. The studies proposed here will further our understanding of these brain responses to facial expressions and offer improved human brain imaging tasks for future study of the brain responses that underlie anxiety disorders.