Prefrontal-amygdala interactions in social learning

描述(申请人提供)：这份R01申请书建议使用人类受试者的功能神经成像来阐明前额叶-杏仁核回路在面部表情处理中的作用，这些表情预测不同的社交结果。在神经成像研究中，面部表情的呈现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交线索。此外，这些任务已被证明有助于揭示患有各种情绪障碍(例如，焦虑、抑郁)的患者的异常大脑激活模式。在这里，我们建议进一步开发面部表情任务，用于特定的精神病理障碍。这项工作的用处是，它将提供更好的了解决定杏仁核反应的基本规则(目标1)，使我们能够更好地了解杏仁核在遇到这种表达时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作用工作联系起来，这在阐明恐惧学习的神经基础及其在焦虑症中的异常方面显示出特别的希望(目标3)。这里提出的实验对于建立对人类大脑对重要社会线索的正常反应模式的理解至关重要，以便允许未来的发展研究(即，针对儿童和青少年)以及直接转化为临床人群。大脑中名为杏仁核的区域对他人的面部表情特别敏感，已被证明对焦虑症患者的面部恐惧表情表现出夸大的反应。这可能在一定程度上导致了对困扰焦虑症患者的潜在威胁的警觉和高反应性增加的症状。这里提出的研究将进一步加深我们对这些大脑对面部表情的反应的理解，并为未来研究导致焦虑症的大脑反应提供改进的人类大脑成像任务。

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.