Amygdala-Prefrontal Interactions When Interpreting Ambiguous Facial Expressions

描述（由申请人提供）：解释他人的模糊面部表情时的杏仁核-前额叶互动对情绪面部表情的研究表明，个体对不同的面部表情表现出特定的行为，生理和神经反应，这些反应的异常与精神病理学密切相关。特别重要的是，杏仁核和内侧前额叶皮质（mPFC）之间的动态相互作用在处理面部表情中起着至关重要的作用。虽然大量的研究集中在具有明确情感效价的面部表情上（例如，恐惧的面孔），研究人们如何消除情感上模糊的面部表情（例如，惊讶的脸）可能被证明是一个有用的方法，在评估杏仁核mPFC的相互作用。事实上，先前的研究已经表明，这些区域显示出彼此相反的关系，并且它们的活动由每个人对惊讶的面孔的评价确定为积极或消极（Kim等人，2003; 2004）。基于这些发现，本研究的目的是阐明杏仁核-前额叶相互作用在解释情绪模糊刺激时的性质。为此，拟议研究的结果将有助于现有的杏仁核-mPFC回路的知识，通过a）识别主要是积极/消极与真正模糊的惊讶面孔及其对目标1中大脑活动的影响，B）通过目标2中感知效价的自发和/或诱导变化解决惊讶面孔中的模糊性来评估杏仁核-mPFC相互作用，以及c）建立所观察到的杏仁核-mPFC电路的遗传和解剖学基础，以便更好地理解驱动两个大脑区域之间的串扰的潜在机制。鉴于许多关于精神病理学障碍的调查的重点是杏仁核的异常和mPFC对这些结构施加调节影响的失败，拟议的研究将有助于促进精神病理学的研究，通过提供一个更好的理解杏仁核-mPFC电路，通过实验任务，可以定制到特定的精神病理学障碍。 公共卫生相关性：杏仁核和前额皮质之间的有效串扰是成功的情绪调节的重要组成部分（Urry等人，2006），并且相反地，异常的杏仁核-前额叶回路是许多主要情绪和焦虑障碍如创伤后应激障碍的标志（Shin et al.，2005）或重度抑郁症（Johnstone等人，2007年）。通过利用与惊讶的面孔相关的固有情感模糊性，拟议研究中的任务是专门针对杏仁核-前额叶回路的挖掘和评估。这些任务将直接适用于精神病理学群体的研究，允许杏仁核-前额叶回路及其与特定行为症状的关系进行评估，并提供该回路功能变化的可量化指标，可用于比较不同治疗类型的有效性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Amygdala-prefrontal Interactions when Interpreting Ambiguous Facial Expressions of Others Research on facial expressions of emotion has demonstrated that individuals exhibit specific behavioral, physiological, and neural reactions to different facial expressions, and abnormalities of these reactions are closely linked to psychopathology. Of particular importance, it has been suggested that the dynamic interaction between the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) plays a crucial role in processing facial expressions. While a significant body of research has focused on facial expressions with clear emotional valence (e.g., fearful faces), studying how people disambiguate emotionally ambiguous facial expressions (e.g., surprised faces) could prove to be a useful approach in assessing amygdala-mPFC interactions. Indeed, previous studies have shown that these regions show an inverse relationship with each other, and that their activity was determined by each individual's evaluation of the surprised faces as being positive or negative (Kim et al., 2003; 2004). Based on these findings, the objective of the proposed studies is to elucidate the nature of amygdala-prefrontal interactions in the interpretation of emotionally ambiguous stimuli. To this end, the findings from the proposed studies will contribute to existing knowledge of the amygdala-mPFC circuitry by a) identifying surprised faces that are predominantly positive/negative versus truly ambiguous and their impact on brain activity in Aim 1, b) assessing the amygdala-mPFC interaction by resolving ambiguity in surprised faces through spontaneous and/or induced changes in their perceived valence in Aim 2, and c) establishing genetic and anatomical bases of the observed amygdala-mPFC circuitry, in order to better understand the underlying mechanism that is driving the crosstalk between the two brain regions. Given that the focus of many investigations concerning psychopathological disorders is on the abnormality of the amygdala and the failure of the mPFC to exert regulatory influence on such structures, the proposed studies will help facilitate the study of psychopathology by providing a better understanding of the amygdala-mPFC circuitry through experimental tasks that could be tailored to specific psychopathological disorders. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Amygdala-prefrontal Interactions when Interpreting Ambiguous Facial Expressions of Others Efficient crosstalk between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex is an essential component of successful emotion regulation (Urry et al., 2006), and conversely, aberrant amygdala-prefrontal circuitry is a hallmark of many major mood and anxiety disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (Shin et al., 2005) or major depression (Johnstone et al., 2007). By taking advantage of the inherent emotional ambiguity associated with surprised faces, the tasks in the proposed studies are specifically tailored to tap into and assess the amygdala- prefrontal circuitry. These tasks will be directly applicable to the study of psychopathological groups, allowing the assessment of the amygdala-prefrontal circuitry and its relationship to specific behavioral symptoms, as well as providing a quantifiable index of the functional changes in this circuitry that could be utilized to compare the effectiveness of different treatment types.