Neurophysiological Correlates of Emotional Modulation of Visual Perception

描述（由申请人提供）：情感和认知系统之间的相互作用是对环境产生适当反应和增强感官过程以检测有用的传入信息所必需的。在处理情绪刺激的个体差异，如不同程度的焦虑或快感缺乏，可能会导致不同的后续行为和自上而下/自下而上（TD/BU）控制的感觉处理。大量的研究集中在将焦虑分数与各种情感相关区域（如杏仁核、前额叶皮质和基底神经节）中的威胁相关处理相关联，以响应负面情绪刺激和高阶注意力任务的表现。然而，相对较少的研究，调查享乐能力，奖励加工区域，如腹侧纹状体和其他的神经反应之间的关系，并在注意任务的效率。对奖励过程的研究集中在冒险和成瘾上。目前尚不清楚情绪偏见的表现变化如何植根于基本感知。在这个项目中，我将解决这些问题：研究焦虑和快感缺乏如何影响情绪线索视觉搜索（AIM 1）的性能，并使用情绪刺激的效价，以研究有效的连接情感处理区域和TD/BU控制区的感知（AIM 2）之间的差异。我将在方向、颜色和运动方向区域（Aim 3）上对比这些效果。在事件相关的功能磁共振成像会话中，被评定为焦虑和快感缺乏的健康参与者将执行特征（FS）和连接（CS）视觉搜索，分别已知单独调用BU控制或与附加的TD控制一起调用BU控制（Wolfe，1998）。一个试验使用一个中性的，恐惧的或快乐的面孔线索，以唤起情绪处理区的反应，然后通过一个任务显示隐蔽地搜索一个目标的基础上的一个单一的（FS）或对（CS）的功能。fMRI数据的动态因果模型将揭示有效的连接模式之间的情绪加工区和TD/BU控制的视觉感知。我预测更高的焦虑分数与威胁线索FS中恐惧区域和早期视觉区域（V1-V5）之间的连接增强相关，而与威胁线索CS中杏仁核和TD调节区域（包括前扣带回、OFC、vm/dl PFC、PPC）之间的连接减弱相关。较高的快感缺失分数可能与奖励和BU区域之间的连接性较强的奖励线索FS和较弱的连接TD区域在积极的线索CS。我将把这些发现整合到视觉感知的情感偏向的边缘皮层模型中，这将有助于理解抑郁症等精神疾病，其主要症状包括焦虑和享乐能力下降。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Interaction between emotional and cognitive systems is required for producing appropriate reactions to the environment and for enhancing sensory processes to detect useful incoming information. Individual differences in the processing of emotional stimuli, as seen in varying degrees of anxiety or anhedonia, may underlie varying subsequent behavior and top-down/bottom-up (TD/BU) control of sensory processing. An extensive body of research has focused on correlating anxiety scores with threat-related processing in a variety of affect-related areas such as the amygdala, prefrontal cortices, and basal ganglia in response to negative emotional stimuli and performance in high-order tasks of attention. However, comparatively fewer studies have investigated the relationship between hedonic capacity, neural response in reward-processing regions such as the ventral striatum and others, and with efficiency in attentional tasks. Examinations of reward-processing have focused on risk taking and addiction. It remains unclear how emotion-biased performance changes are rooted in basic perception. With this project, I will address these issues by: examining how anxiety and anhedonia affect performance on emotion-cued visual search (Aim1) and using emotional stimuli of - valence to examine effective connectivity differences between emotion processing regions and TD/BU control areas of perception (Aim2). I will contrast these effects on orientation, color, and motion direction regions (Aim3). In an event-related fMRI session, healthy participants rated for anxiety and anhedonia will perform feature (FS) and conjunction (CS) visual search, known respectively to invoke BU control alone or with additional TD control (Wolfe, 1998). A trial uses a neutral, fearful or happy face cue to evoke responses in emotion processing areas, followed by a task display to covertly search for a target based on a single (FS) or pair (CS) of features. Dynamic Causal Modeling of fMRI data will reveal effective connectivity patterns between emotion processing areas and TD/BU control of visual perception. I predict higher anxiety scores to be correlated with enhanced connectivity between fear regions and early visual regions (V1-V5) in threat-cued FS and weaker connectivity between the amygdala and TD regulatory regions (including the anterior cingulate, OFC, vm/dl PFC, PPC) during threat-cued CS. Higher anhedonia scores may correlate with stronger connectivity between reward and BU regions in reward-cued FS and weaker connectivity TD regions during positive-cued CS. I will incorporate these findings in a limbic-cortical model of emotional-biased of visual perception, which will improve understanding psychiatric illnesses like depression, whose cardinal symptoms include anxiety and diminished hedonic capacity.