Armony J L, Dolan R J
1Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
Neuroreport. 2001 Oct 29;12(15):3407-11. doi: 10.1097/00001756-200110290-00051.
Responses to a stimulus signaling danger depend not only on the nature of that stimulus, but also on the context in which it is presented. A large body of work has been conducted in experimental animals investigating the neural correlates of contextual modulation of fear responses. However, much less is known about this process in humans. In this study we used functional MRI in a fear conditioning paradigm to explore this phenomenon. Responses to acoustic conditioned stimuli in auditory cortex were modulated by the presence of a visual context which signaled the likelihood of receiving an aversive unconditioned stimulus. Furthermore, the presence of the aversive visual context was associated with enhanced activity in parietal cortex, which may reflect an increase in attention to the presence of environmental threat stimuli.
对危险信号刺激的反应不仅取决于该刺激的性质，还取决于其呈现的背景。在实验动物中已经开展了大量工作来研究恐惧反应的背景调节的神经关联。然而，对于人类的这一过程我们了解得要少得多。在本研究中，我们在恐惧条件反射范式中使用功能磁共振成像来探究这一现象。听觉皮层对听觉条件刺激的反应受到视觉背景的调节，该视觉背景表明了接收厌恶性非条件刺激的可能性。此外，厌恶性视觉背景的存在与顶叶皮层活动增强有关，这可能反映了对环境威胁刺激存在的注意力增加。
