Functional MRI Investigations Characterizing an Emo-Motoric Network of Emotional Experience

情绪刺激会吸引注意力，因此我们更有可能看到这些刺激，而不是环境中的其他物体。这种情绪优势也体现在神经层面--大脑中与注意力相关的区域在感知情绪刺激时比中性刺激显示出更多的活动。然而，我们的情感反应并不仅限于此。相反，我们经常会产生某种行为来回应情绪刺激。最近的脑成像研究表明，情绪增强了与运动计划相关的区域的活动，就像它影响与注意力相关的区域一样。在脊髓细胞中也观察到了类似的模式，这表明情绪有助于促进神经网络，使我们处于“行动准备”状态。 这笔探索基金将资助温尼伯大学斯蒂芬·史密斯博士的情感神经科学实验室。史密斯博士的研究团队进行了尖端研究，试图确定大脑和脊髓中影响情绪-运动相互作用的网络。在目前的研究中，史密斯博士和他的学生将使用功能磁共振成像来测量大脑和脊髓的活动。来自这些扫描的数据将提供目前可用的关于情绪体验的最完整的神经架构的描述，并可能应用于我们对众多心理障碍背后的神经科学的理解。

Emotional stimuli capture attention, thus making it more likely that we will look at these stimuli than at other objects in our environment. This emotional advantage is also seen at the neural level—areas of the brain related to attention show more activity when perceiving emotional than neutral stimuli. However, our emotional responses do not end there. Instead, we often produce some sort of behaviour in response to the emotional stimuli. Recent brain-imaging studies have shown that emotion enhances activity in regions related to movement planning in the same way that it influences areas related to attention. A similar pattern has been observed in cells in the spinal cord, suggesting that emotion helps promote neural networks that will put us in a state of “action preparedness.” This Discovery Grant will fund Dr. Stephen Smith’s Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Smith’s research team performs cutting-edge research that attempts to identify the networks in the brain and spinal cord that influence emotion-movement interactions. In the current studies, Dr. Smith and his students will use functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure activity in the brain and the spinal cord. The data from these scans will provide the most complete depiction of the neural architecture of emotional experiences currently available, and may have applications for our understanding of the neuroscience behind numerous psychological disorders.