A New Paradigm for Deciphering the Neural Mechanisms of Emotions

描述(由申请者提供)：情绪对生存和社会交流具有重要作用。多个大脑区域被认为是情绪大脑的一部分，但它们是如何产生情绪的目前尚不清楚。这个项目的总体目标是填补我们知识中的这一空白，并确定情绪大脑多个区域之间的功能相互作用如何产生情绪的内部状态，它们的定义属性是什么，以及它们是如何在行为中表达的。该方法由三个部分组成。在具体目标1中，将使用一种新的记录设备来监测最复杂的情绪效应器--面部表情系统的活动模式，并将量化这些模式及其转变的统计特性。这个目标的目的是客观地定义和自动检测面部的情感表情。在具体目标2中，情绪大脑将被利用社会反应来控制感觉线索和可观察的反应，在这种情况下，被看到的情绪面孔被他们的观察者短暂但条件反射地模仿。全脑功能磁共振成像将定位参与这一行为的电路节点，随后的电生理记录将识别通过该电路节点的信息流和转换。在具体目标3中，多个节点 文献中确定的情绪脑将被用于大规模并行电生理记录，以从分布的神经回路中获得在广泛的行为状态期间的时空精确的活动轮廓。这些数据将被用来推断情绪大脑回路之间的功能相互作用，并确定它们是形成离散的还是分级的活动状态，相互排斥的状态还是混合的活动状态，包括局部或分布的活动。这些结果将允许客观地描述情绪状态，并对目前主要的情绪理论进行评估。该项目的成果预计将对情感神经科学产生重大影响，通过直接解决其最基本的问题；运动神经科学，通过揭示面部表情系统的编码原理；社会神经科学，通过推导非语言交流的“词汇”；以及系统神经科学，通过揭示全球分布的活动状态如何与局部信息处理相互作用。情绪及其面部表情障碍是许多精神障碍的特征，包括双相情绪障碍、精神分裂症或自闭症谱系障碍。因此，该项目符合国家精神卫生研究所的战略目标，即寻求对基本大脑行为过程的综合理解，为理解精神障碍提供坚实的基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Emotions serve essential functions for survival and social communication. Multiple brain areas are recognized as part of the emotional brain, yet how they generate emotions it is currently unknown. The overall objective of this project is to fil this gap in our knowledge and determine how functional interactions between the multiple areas of the emotional brain generate internal states of emotion, what their defining properties are, and how they are expressed in behavior. The approach consists of three components. In Specific Aim 1, activity patterns of the most sophisticated effector of the emotions, the facial expression system, will be monitored with a new recording device, and the statistical properties of these patterns and their transitions will be quantified. The objective of this aim is to objectiely define and automatically detect emotional expressions of the face. In Specific Aim 2, the emotional brain will be harnessed to sensory cues and observable responses using social reflexes, in which seen emotional faces are briefly but reflexively mimicked by their observers. Whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging will localize the nodes of the circuit mediating this behavior, and subsequent electrophysiological recordings will identify information flow and transformation through the nodes of this circuit. In Specific Aim 3, the multiple nodes of the emotional brain identified in the literature will be targeted for massively parallel electrophysiological recording to obtain spatiotemporally precise activity profiles from distribute neural circuits during a wide range of behavioral states. These data will be used to infer functional interactions between emotional brain circuits and to determine whether they form discrete or graded activity states, mutually exclusive ones or mixtures, comprising localized or distributed activity. These results will allow for an objective characterization of emotional state and an evaluation of major current theories of the emotions. The outcomes of this project are expected to have major impact on the affective neurosciences, by directly addressing its most fundamental question; motor neuroscience, by revealing the coding principles of the facial expression system; social neuroscience, by deriving the 'vocabulary' of non-verbal communication; and systems neuroscience, by revealing how global distributed activity states interact with local information processing. Disturbances of the emotion and its facial expression are characteristic of many psychiatric disorders including bipolar mood disorders, schizophrenia, or autism spectrum disorders. The project thus meets the strategic objective of the National Institute of Mental Health in pursuing an integrative understanding of a basic brain-behavior process to provide a firm foundation for understanding mental disorders.