Frontal cortical interactions during decision-making and social valuation

心理疾病影响着英国和其他国家的许多人。许多疾病，如自闭症、抑郁症和强迫症，都与社会交往的变化和决策模式的改变有关。例如，抑郁症通常与社交价值的降低以及在做出决定和选择下一步做什么时对负面反馈的分配不适当有关。在这种疾病中，变化不仅发生在行为层面，也发生在大脑层面。有两个区域可能特别重要--前额叶皮质和前扣带回皮质(PFC和ACC)。目前尚不清楚的是，大脑的变化如何以及是否会导致行为层面的变化。该提议是使用动物模型，在动物模型中，在PFC和ACC的小区域诱导功能障碍。然后，可以通过仔细测量行为来评估功能障碍的影响。通过使用两种类型的大脑成像技术，可以评估这些变化是如何发生的。第一种脑成像方法被称为扩散加权成像，它观察PFC和ACC与其他大脑区域的相互连接模式，并告诉我们大脑内PFC和ACC到达并影响其他大脑区域从而影响行为的路径。这种连接途径正日益成为治疗最严重形式的心理疾病的医学尝试的重点。第二种脑成像方法被称为功能磁共振成像，它测量大脑的活动水平。通过测量其他脑区的活动水平，可以确定PFC和ACC功能障碍对其他脑区工作的影响。如果发现了这样的变化，那么它表明，PFC和ACC最初的微小变化可以对大脑其余部分的工作方式产生更广泛的影响。这可能会反过来揭示在心理疾病期间决策和社会互动的模式是如何发生变化的。

Psychological illnesses affect many people in the UK and other countries. Many illnesses, such as autism, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder are associated with changes in social interaction and altered patterns of decision-making. For example, depression is often associated with a decrease in the value given to social interaction and with the allocation of undue weight to negative feedback when making a decision and choosing what to do next. In such illnesses changes do not just occur at the behavioural level, they also occur at the level of the brain. Two regions may be particularly important – prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex (PFC and ACC). What is not clear is how and whether the brain changes lead to changes at the behavioural level. The proposal is to use animal models in which dysfunction is induced in small regions of PFC and ACC. The effect of dysfunction can then be assessed by taking careful measurements of behaviour. How the changes occur can be assessed by using two types of brain imaging techniques. The first brain imaging approach is called diffusion weighted imaging and it looks at the interconnexion patterns of the PFC and ACC with other brain areas and tells us the routes within the brain by which the PFC and ACC reach and influence other brain areas and thereby affect behaviour. Such connexion routes are increasingly becoming the focus for medical attempts to treat the most severe forms of psychological illness. The second brain imaging approach is called functional magnetic resonance imaging and it measures activity levels in the brain. By measuring the activity levels in other brain areas it is possible to ascertain the impact of dysfunction in PFC and ACC on the working of those other brain areas. If such changes are found then it suggests that small initial changes in PFC and ACC can have wider consequences for how the rest of the brain works. This may in turn reveal how patterns of decision-making and social interaction come to change during psychological illnesses.