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产生对环境的适当反应和增强感知过程以检测有用的传入信息所必需的。情绪刺激处理的个体差异，如不同程度的焦虑或快感缺乏，可能是随后不同行为和自上而下/自下而上（TD/BU）控制感觉处理的基础。大量的研究集中在焦虑得分与各种情感相关区域（如杏仁核、前额叶皮层和基底神经节）对负面情绪刺激的反应和高阶注意力任务的表现之间的关联。然而，关于享乐能力、腹侧纹状体等奖赏处理区域的神经反应与注意力任务效率之间关系的研究相对较少。奖励处理的研究主要集中在冒险和成瘾上。目前尚不清楚情绪偏见的表现变化是如何植根于基本认知的。在这个项目中，我将通过以下方式来解决这些问题：研究焦虑和快感缺乏如何影响情绪线索视觉搜索（Aim1）的表现，并使用效价的情绪刺激来研究情绪处理区域和TD/BU感知控制区（Aim2）之间的有效连通性差异。我将在方向、颜色和运动方向区域（Aim3）上对比这些效果。在与事件相关的fMRI会话中，被评定为焦虑和快感缺乏症的健康参与者将执行特征（FS）和连接（CS）视觉搜索，分别调用单独的BU控制或附加的TD控制（Wolfe, 1998）。一项试验使用中性、恐惧或快乐的面部线索来唤起情绪处理区域的反应，随后是一个任务显示，根据单个（FS）或一对（CS）特征秘密地搜索目标。fMRI数据的动态因果建模将揭示情绪处理区域与视觉知觉的TD/BU控制之间的有效连接模式。我预测，较高的焦虑分数与受威胁的FS中恐惧区域与早期视觉区域（V1-V5）之间的连通性增强有关，而在受威胁的CS中，杏仁核与TD调节区域（包括前扣带、OFC、vm/dl PFC、PPC）之间的连通性较弱。较高的快感缺乏症评分可能与奖励性FS中奖励和BU区域之间的连通性较强以及正性CS中TD区域的连通性较弱有关。我将把这些发现纳入一个视觉感知情感偏见的边缘-皮层模型，这将提高对抑郁症等精神疾病的理解，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.