Green Melissa J, Phillips Mary L
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, 2109, Australia.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2004 May;28(3):333-42. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2004.03.006.
Rapid and efficient judgments about the significance of social threat are important for species survival and may recruit specialized neurocognitive systems, consistent with biological models of threat processing. We review cognitive, psychophysiological, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging evidence in support of specialized neural networks subserving the processing of facial displays of threat. Cognitive research suggests that faces depicting anger are detected quickly when presented amongst other facial expressions, on the basis of distinguishing facial features. Psychophysiological investigations using visual scanpath techniques provide evidence for increased foveal attention to facial features of threat-related expressions (anger, fear), which may facilitate rapid detection and subsequent appraisal of the significance of threat (such as the direction of impending threat). Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies implicate a primary role for the amygdale and pre-frontal cortices in interpreting signs of danger from facial expressions and other social stimuli. Subtle disturbances in these neurocognitive systems underlying efficient threat detection (manifesting in attentional biases and aberrant neural activity) may result in abnormally heightened perception of social threat, as seen in clinical levels of social anxiety and/or persecutory delusions in schizophrenia. Clinical states of paranoia may therefore reflect normal variation (i.e. biases) in the adaptive mechanisms which have evolved, in the Darwinian sense, to facilitate efficient threat detection in humans. As such, clinical levels of paranoia may represent the inevitable cost of efficient threat perception--or 'justified' suspicion--that is necessary for survival of the human species.
对社会威胁的重要性做出快速而有效的判断对物种生存至关重要，并且可能会调用专门的神经认知系统，这与威胁处理的生物学模型相一致。我们回顾了认知、心理生理、神经心理学和神经影像学方面的证据，以支持专门的神经网络参与对面部威胁表情的处理。认知研究表明，当愤怒表情与其他面部表情同时出现时，基于其独特的面部特征能被快速识别。使用视觉扫描路径技术的心理生理研究为对威胁相关表情（愤怒、恐惧）的面部特征增加中央凹注意力提供了证据，这可能有助于快速检测并随后评估威胁的重要性（例如即将到来的威胁方向）。神经心理学和神经影像学研究表明杏仁核和前额叶皮质在解读面部表情及其他社会刺激中的危险信号方面起主要作用。这些高效威胁检测背后的神经认知系统的细微紊乱（表现为注意力偏差和异常神经活动）可能导致对社会威胁的异常高度感知，如在社交焦虑临床水平和/或精神分裂症的被害妄想中所见。偏执的临床状态因此可能反映了在达尔文意义上为促进人类高效威胁检测而进化出的适应机制中的正常变异（即偏差）。如此看来，偏执的临床水平可能代表了高效威胁感知——或“合理”怀疑——这一人类生存所必需的必然代价。
