Neural correlates of reactive aggression and their relation to socio-emotional responsivity

攻击行为是动物和人类社会互动的基本形式。以前关于攻击性的神经科学研究主要集中在神经和精神病患者的病理性攻击。研究表明，这些患者对社会情绪刺激的反应性改变与杏仁核和眶额皮质（OFC）功能障碍有关。首先，对健康人的神经科学研究支持眶额皮层的相关性，但也显示了其他区域如扣带回和纹状体的作用。为了研究人类反应性攻击的神经相关性，我们将利用社会心理学中一个成熟的范式，泰勒攻击范式。基于我们自己的实验室和其他小组以前的工作，我们希望确定参与积极社交互动的相关大脑区域，并澄清它们在对社会情绪线索的反应方面的作用。我们将研究社会情绪背景的实验操作的效果，以及社会情绪反应的个体间变异。

Aggressive behavior is a basic form of social interactions in animals as well as in humans. Previousneuroscientific research on aggression has focused on pathological aggression in neurological and psychiatric patients. Studies have demonstrated altered responsivity to socio-emotional stimuli in these patients that is related to dysfunctions of amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). First neuroscientific studies in healthy humans support the relevance of OFC, but show also a role of other regions such as the cingulate gyrus and the striatum. To examine neural correlates of reactive aggression in humans, we will take advantage of a well-established paradigm from social psychology, the Taylor Aggression Paradigm. Based on previous work of our own lab and other groups, we want to identify relevant brain regions involved in aggressive social interactions and clarify their role with respect to responsivity to socio-emotional cues. We will examine both the effect of experimental manipulations of the socio-emotional context as well as the interindividual variability in the socio-emotional responsivity.