Pietrini P, Guazzelli M, Basso G, Jaffe K, Grafman J
Cognitive Neuroscience Section, NINDS, NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892-1440, USA.
Am J Psychiatry. 2000 Nov;157(11):1772-81. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.157.11.1772.
Neurodegenerative or traumatic lesions of the frontal lobes often lead to abnormally aggressive behavior. The authors hypothesized that the imaginal evoking of scenarios involving aggressive behavior would be associated with a modulation of the functional activity in the human frontal cortex.
Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) determinations by positron emission tomography and psychophysiological measures of emotional responsivity were obtained in a group of 15 young healthy volunteers with good visual imagery abilities and no history of abnormal behavior while they imagined the same scenario with four variations involving emotionally neutral behavior and aggressive behavior.
Compared to the imagined neutral scenario, the imagined scenarios involving aggressive behavior were associated with significant emotional reactivity and rCBF reductions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, suggesting that a functional deactivation of this cortical area occurs when individuals respond to the eliciting of imagined aggressive behavior.
These results in healthy subjects further expand previous findings from animal and human studies by providing an in vivo functional demonstration of the involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex in the expression of aggressive behavior. They are also consistent with the hypothesis that a functional alteration of this cortical region may be present in individuals with pathological aggressive behavior.
额叶的神经退行性或创伤性病变常导致异常攻击行为。作者推测，想象涉及攻击行为的情景会与人类额叶皮质功能活动的调节相关。
对15名视觉想象能力良好且无异常行为史的年轻健康志愿者进行正电子发射断层扫描测定局部脑血流量（rCBF），并在他们想象包含情绪中性行为和攻击行为的四种变化的相同情景时，对情绪反应性进行心理生理测量。
与想象的中性情景相比，涉及攻击行为的想象情景与腹内侧前额叶皮质显著的情绪反应性和rCBF降低相关，这表明当个体对想象的攻击行为的引发做出反应时，该皮质区域会发生功能性失活。
这些在健康受试者中的结果通过提供眶额叶皮质参与攻击行为表达的体内功能证明，进一步扩展了先前动物和人类研究的发现。它们也与以下假设一致，即病理性攻击行为个体可能存在该皮质区域的功能改变。
