Prefrontal-amygdala interactions in social learning

描述（由申请人提供）：这项R01申请建议使用人类受试者的功能神经成像来阐明前额叶-杏仁核回路在预测不同社会结果的面部表情处理中的作用。在神经成像研究中，面部表情的表现已经被证明是特别强大的刺激，可以激活杏仁核和前额叶区域，这些区域参与处理与生物相关的社会线索。此外，这些任务已被证明有助于揭示患有各种情绪障碍（如焦虑、抑郁）的患者的异常大脑激活模式。在此，我们建议进一步开发用于特定精神病理障碍的面部表情任务。这项工作的效用在于，它将更好地理解决定杏仁核反应的基本规则（目标1），使我们能够更好地理解当遇到这种表达时，杏仁核如何与相互连接的前额叶区域相互作用（目标2），并将这种社会/情感人类工作与更大的巴甫洛夫条件反射工作联系起来。这对阐明恐惧学习的神经基础及其在焦虑症中的异常表现出特别的希望（目标3）。这里提出的实验对于建立人类大脑对重要社会线索反应的正常模式的理解至关重要，以便允许未来的发展研究（即儿童和青少年）以及直接转化为临床人群。大脑中有一个叫做杏仁核的区域对他人的面部表情特别敏感，研究表明，患有焦虑症的人对恐惧的面部表情会表现出夸张的反应。这可能在一定程度上解释了焦虑障碍患者对潜在威胁的警惕性增强和过度反应的症状。这里提出的研究将进一步加深我们对这些面部表情的大脑反应的理解，并为未来研究焦虑障碍背后的大脑反应提供改进的人脑成像任务。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This R01 application proposes to use functional neuroimaging with human subjects to elucidate the role of prefrontal-amygdala circuitry in the processing of facial expressions that predict different social outcomes. Presentations of facial expressions of emotion in neuroimaging studies have proven particularly robust stimuli for activating amygdala and prefrontal regions involved in processing biologically-relevant social cues. Further, these tasks have proven useful for revealing aberrant brain activation patterns in patients with various emotional disorders (e.g., anxiety, depression). Here we propose to further develop facial expression tasks for use with specific psychopathological disorders. The utility of this work is that it will provide for a better understanding of the basic rules that determine amygdala response (Aim 1), allow us to better understand how the amygdala interacts with reciprocally connected prefrontal areas when such expressions are encountered (Aim 2) and tie this social/emotional human work to the greater Pavlovian conditioning work, which shows particular promise for elucidating the neural substrates of fear learning and its aberrations in anxiety disorders (Aim 3). The experiments proposed here are critical for establishing an understanding of the normal pattern of human brain responsivity to important social cues in order to allow future developmental research (i.e., with children and adolescents) as well as direct translation to clinical populations. An area of the brain called the amygdala is particularly responsive to the facial expressions of others and has been shown to exhibit exaggerated reactivity to the facial expression of fear in subjects with anxiety disorders. This may, in part, underlie the symptoms of increased vigilance and hyper-reactivity to potential threat that plague individuals with anxiety disorders. The studies proposed here will further our understanding of these brain responses to facial expressions and offer improved human brain imaging tasks for future study of the brain responses that underlie anxiety disorders.