Neurobiology of Human Cognitive-Emotion Interactions

人类认知情绪相互作用的神经生物学

• 批准号: RGPIN-2017-05832
• 负责人: Armony, Jorge
• 金额: $ 2.33万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=644135
• 关键词: Neurobiology; Human; Cognitive; Emotion; Interactions

Emotional expressions are critical tools for social communication; they inform conspecifics about important events in their environment, as well as provide valuable information about the emotional state of the emitter. As such, the ability to rapidly and accurately decode the emotional information carried by an expression is an essential aspect of daily life and can even become crucial for survival. Emotional communication is multi-modal, typically relying on both visual and acoustic channels (as well as touch, depending on circumstances). Importantly, emotional information conveyed through the auditory modality can be more efficient, as it does not require direct visual contact and can thus reach a large number of individuals scattered across a wide area.***There is strong evidence showing that emotional stimuli, especially those signalling possible danger, are better remembered than similar ones but with no affective value (i.e., neutral). Nonetheless, there are still several open questions regarding the nature and specificity of this memory facilitation by emotion, particularly for auditory information. Thus, the general aim of this research program is to answer these questions employing carefully-controlled experimental paradigms, using ecologically-valid stimuli and measuring brain responses with state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques, namely functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), functional near-infrarred spectroscopy (fNIRS) and electroencephalography (EEG). Specifically, we will investigate the brain mechanisms involved in the processing of different types of emotion-conveying information — across modalities (visual and auditory), classes (facial vs. body expressions; speech vs. nonlinguistic vocalizations) and with different degrees of biological relevance (e.g., voice vs. music) — and their interaction with memory. The main questions to be addressed are:***(1) What are the spatio-temporal patterns of neural activity associated with memory encoding and retrieval across different emotion and modalities? ***(2) How specific are emotional memories? ***(3) How does stimulus relevance affect the emotional modulation of memory? ***Our multipronged approach will allow us to gain a better characterization of brain responses associated with these processes, given the complementarity of the techniques used, in terms of temporal and spatial resolution. Moreover, it will provide invaluable information regarding the precise nature of the signals, and their relation to the underlying neuronal activity, obtained with these widely used methodologies. ***Taken together, these studies will contribute to a better understanding of how the brain processes emotional information and how it interacts with cognitive processes across different classes and sensory modalities. This knowledge, in turn, will help to develop a supra-modal theory of emotion.**

情感表达是社交沟通的重要工具；它们向同种人通报其环境中的重要事件，并提供有关发射者情绪状态的有价值的信息。因此，快速准确地解码表情所携带的情感信息的能力是日常生活的一个重要方面，甚至对生存至关重要。情感交流是多模式的，通常依赖视觉和听觉渠道（以及触觉，视情况而定）。重要的是，通过听觉方式传达的情感信息可以更有效，因为它不需要直接的视觉接触，因此可以到达分散在广阔区域的大量个体。***有强有力的证据表明，情感刺激，特别是那些表示可能危险的信号，比类似但没有情感价值（即中性）的刺激更容易被记住。尽管如此，关于情绪促进记忆的性质和特异性，特别是听觉信息，仍然存在一些悬而未决的问题。因此，该研究计划的总体目标是通过仔细控制的实验范例来回答这些问题，使用生态上有效的刺激，并通过最先进的神经影像技术测量大脑反应，即功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）、功能性近红外光谱（fNIRS）和脑电图（EEG）。具体来说，我们将研究处理不同类型情感传达信息的大脑机制——跨模式（视觉和听觉）、类别（面部表情与身体表达；言语与非语言发声）以及不同程度的生物相关性（例如声音与音乐）——以及它们与记忆的相互作用。要解决的主要问题是：***（1）与不同情绪和模式的记忆编码和检索相关的神经活动的时空模式是什么？ ***(2) 情感记忆有多具体？ ***(3) 刺激相关性如何影响记忆的情绪调节？ ***考虑到所使用的技术在时间和空间分辨率方面的互补性，我们的多管齐下的方法将使我们能够更好地表征与这些过程相关的大脑反应。此外，它将提供有关通过这些广泛使用的方法获得的信号的精确性质及其与潜在神经元活动的关系的宝贵信息。 ***总而言之，这些研究将有助于更好地理解大脑如何处理情绪信息以及它如何与不同类别和感觉模式的认知过程相互作用。这些知识反过来将有助于发展超模态情感理论。**