Todorov Alexander, Gobbini M Ida, Evans Karla K, Haxby James V
Department of Psychology, Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2007 Jan 7;45(1):163-73. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.04.018. Epub 2006 Jun 6.
In a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, we explored whether affective person knowledge based on memories formed from minimal information is spontaneously retrieved in face perception. In the first stage of the experiment, participants were presented with 120 unfamiliar faces. Each face was presented with a description of one of four types of behaviors: aggressive, disgusting, neutral, and nice. In the second stage, participants were scanned while engaged in a one-back recognition task in which they saw the faces that were associated with behaviors and 30 novel faces. Although this task is a simple perceptual task that neither demands person evaluation nor retrieval of person knowledge, neural responses to faces differed as a function of the behaviors. Faces associated with behaviors evoked stronger activity than did novel faces in regions implicated in social cognition--anterior paracingulate cortex and superior temporal sulcus. Explicit memory for the behaviors enhanced the neural response in these regions. Faces associated with disgusting behaviors evoked stronger activity in left anterior insula than did faces associated with aggressive behaviors. This effect was equally strong for faces associated with explicitly recalled behaviors and faces associated with non-recalled behaviors. The findings suggest that affective person knowledge acquired from minimal information is spontaneously retrieved in face perception, engaging neural systems for analysis of social cognition and emotions.
在一项功能磁共振成像实验中，我们探究了基于由最少信息形成的记忆的情感人物知识在面部感知中是否会被自动提取。在实验的第一阶段，向参与者展示120张不熟悉的面孔。每张面孔都配有四种行为类型之一的描述：攻击性的、令人厌恶的、中性的和友善的。在第二阶段，参与者在进行一项单后识别任务时接受扫描，在该任务中他们会看到与行为相关的面孔以及30张新面孔。尽管这项任务是一个简单的感知任务，既不需要对人物进行评估，也不需要提取人物知识，但对面孔的神经反应因行为而异。与行为相关的面孔在涉及社会认知的区域——前扣带回旁皮质和颞上沟——中比新面孔引发更强的活动。对行为的外显记忆增强了这些区域的神经反应。与令人厌恶行为相关的面孔在左前脑岛中比与攻击行为相关的面孔引发更强的活动。对于与明确回忆的行为相关的面孔和与未回忆行为相关的面孔，这种效应同样强烈。研究结果表明，从最少信息中获取的情感人物知识在面部感知中会被自动提取，从而激活用于社会认知和情绪分析的神经系统。
