Brierley B, Medford N, Shaw P, David A S
Section of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry and GKT School of Medicine, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK.
J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2004 Apr;75(4):593-9. doi: 10.1136/jnnp.2002.006403.
The human amygdala is implicated in the formation of emotional memories and the perception of emotional stimuli--particularly fear--across various modalities.
To discern the extent to which these functions are related.
28 patients who had anterior temporal lobectomy (13 left and 15 right) for intractable epilepsy were recruited. Structural magnetic resonance imaging showed that three of them had atrophy of their remaining amygdala. All participants were given tests of affect perception from facial and vocal expressions and of emotional memory, using a standard narrative test and a novel test of word recognition. The results were standardised against matched healthy controls.
Performance on all emotion tasks in patients with unilateral lobectomy ranged from unimpaired to moderately impaired. Perception of emotions in faces and voices was (with exceptions) significantly positively correlated, indicating multimodal emotional processing. However, there was no correlation between the subjects' performance on tests of emotional memory and perception. Several subjects showed strong emotional memory enhancement but poor fear perception. Patients with bilateral amygdala damage had greater impairment, particularly on the narrative test of emotional memory, one showing superior fear recognition but absent memory enhancement.
Bilateral amygdala damage is particularly disruptive of emotional memory processes in comparison with unilateral temporal lobectomy. On a cognitive level, the pattern of results implies that perception of emotional expressions and emotional memory are supported by separate processing systems or streams.
人类杏仁核与情绪记忆的形成以及跨多种模态的情绪刺激（尤其是恐惧）的感知有关。
辨别这些功能之间的相关程度。
招募了28名因顽固性癫痫接受前颞叶切除术（13例左侧，15例右侧）的患者。结构磁共振成像显示其中3人剩余杏仁核萎缩。所有参与者均接受了面部和声音表情的情感感知测试以及情绪记忆测试，采用标准叙述测试和新颖的单词识别测试。结果与匹配的健康对照进行标准化比较。
单侧叶切除术患者在所有情绪任务上的表现从未受损到中度受损不等。面部和声音中的情绪感知（有例外情况）显著正相关，表明存在多模态情绪处理。然而，受试者在情绪记忆测试和感知测试中的表现之间没有相关性。几名受试者表现出强烈的情绪记忆增强但恐惧感知较差。双侧杏仁核损伤的患者损伤更大，尤其是在情绪记忆的叙述测试中，一名患者表现出卓越的恐惧识别但无记忆增强。
与单侧颞叶切除术相比，双侧杏仁核损伤对情绪记忆过程的破坏尤其严重。在认知层面，结果模式表明情绪表达的感知和情绪记忆由不同的处理系统或流支持。
