Bartels A, Zeki S
Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, University College London, UK.
Neuroreport. 2000 Nov 27;11(17):3829-34. doi: 10.1097/00001756-200011270-00046.
The neural correlates of many emotional states have been studied, most recently through the technique of fMRI. However, nothing is known about the neural substrates involved in evoking one of the most overwhelming of all affective states, that of romantic love, about which we report here. The activity in the brains of 17 subjects who were deeply in love was scanned using fMRI, while they viewed pictures of their partners, and compared with the activity produced by viewing pictures of three friends of similar age, sex and duration of friendship as their partners. The activity was restricted to foci in the medial insula and the anterior cingulate cortex and, subcortically, in the caudate nucleus and the putamen, all bilaterally. Deactivations were observed in the posterior cingulate gyrus and in the amygdala and were right-lateralized in the prefrontal, parietal and middle temporal cortices. The combination of these sites differs from those in previous studies of emotion, suggesting that a unique network of areas is responsible for evoking this affective state. This leads us to postulate that the principle of functional specialization in the cortex applies to affective states as well.
许多情绪状态的神经关联已得到研究，最近是通过功能磁共振成像（fMRI）技术进行的。然而，对于引发所有情感状态中最强烈的一种——浪漫爱情的神经基础，我们却一无所知，本文将对此进行报道。对17名深陷爱河的受试者的大脑活动进行了fMRI扫描，期间他们观看自己伴侣的照片，并与观看年龄、性别和友谊时长与伴侣相似的三位朋友照片时产生的大脑活动进行比较。活动局限于双侧脑岛内侧、前扣带回皮质的一些区域，以及皮质下的尾状核和壳核。在扣带回后部、杏仁核观察到了失活现象，并且在额叶前部、顶叶和颞叶中部皮质出现了右侧化。这些区域的组合与先前情绪研究中的区域不同，这表明一个独特的区域网络负责引发这种情感状态。这使我们推测，皮质功能特化原则也适用于情感状态。
