Normal Impulsivity: A Cognitive Neuroscience Analysis

描述(由申请人提供)：这项探索性的R21拨款申请旨在建立研究范式，并取得初步进展，以了解冲动个性特征中个体差异的神经基础。鉴于冲动人格与包括吸毒在内的负面健康行为之间的明显关系，更好地理解这种人格特征将具有相当大的公共卫生价值。关于正常人格是如何在大脑中反映出来的，人们知之甚少。我们所知道的大部分与神经化学有关，而不是认知神经科学中典型的“摩尔”系统水平。因此，这项应用的总体目标是将冲动性的正常变化与大脑功能在这一“摩尔”描述水平上的变化联系起来，也就是根据功能描述的大脑区域的大规模网络。首席研究人员的初步工作表明，在这一分析水平上，可以找到个性冲动和大脑功能之间的系统关系。正常受试者在一系列行为任务中的表现表明，一种常见的冲动衡量标准与前额叶皮质(PFC)功能之间存在很强的相关性。这项研究的具体目的是：(1)超越对PFC功能的全局描述，发现PFC的哪个子系统(S)与冲动的个性差异有关；(2)超越单一的冲动概念，考虑其他几个众所周知(且无关)冲动测量的神经基础；(3)收集假设驱动和探索性功能磁共振数据，以便检验目标1和2产生的假说，这些假说涉及构成冲动正常人格特征的大脑功能差异，并探索大脑激活差异与冲动有关的各种方式。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This exploratory R21 grant application is intended to establish research paradigms for, and make preliminary progress toward, understanding the neural bases of individual differences in the personality trait of impulsivity. Given the demonstrated relation between impulsive personality and negative health behavior, including drug use, a better understanding of this personality trait would be of considerable public health value. Relatively little is known about how normal personality is reflected in the brain. Most of what we do know relates to neurochemistry, as opposed to the more "molar" systems level typical of cognitive neuroscience. As such, the overall goal of this application is to relate normal variation in impulsivity to variation in brain function at this "molar" level of description, that is, in terms of large-scale networks of functionally delineated brain regions. Preliminary work by the principal investigator suggests that systematic relationships can be found between personality impulsivity and brain function at this level of analysis. Normal subjects' performance on a battery of behavioral tasks showed a strong association between a common measure of impulsivity and the functions of prefrontal cortex (PFC). The specific aims of this research are: (1) to go beyond global descriptions of PFC function, to discover which subsystem(s) of PFC are related to personality differences in impulsivity; (2) to go beyond a single conception of impulsivity, to consider the neural bases of several other well-known (and uncorrelated) measures of impulsivity; (3) to gather both hypothesis-driven and exploratory functional MRI data, for purposes of testing hypotheses generated from Aims 1 and 2, concerning the differences in brain function that underlie the normal personality trait of impulsivity, and for exploring the various ways in which differences in brain activation could relate to impulsivity.