Goossens Liesbet, Schruers Koen, Peeters Ronald, Griez Eric, Sunaert Stefan
Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Psychiatry Res. 2007 Jul 15;155(2):113-20. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2006.12.005. Epub 2007 May 11.
In the present study, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine the neural correlates of phobic fear by exposing spider phobic subjects to a visual presentation of spiders. In contrast to control subjects, spider phobics showed significantly increased activation in the amygdala and the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus on the basis of region of interest (ROI) analysis. Furthermore, voxelwise analysis revealed increased activation related to phobia-specific pictures bilaterally in the anterior cingulate cortex, the left insular cortex and bilaterally in the supplementary motor area. These findings confirm the involvement of the amygdala in the processing of phobia-relevant stimuli as found earlier in a recent study. Moreover, the thalamus findings support the involvement of an extrageniculostriate pathway in the process of phobic fear.
在本研究中，通过让蜘蛛恐惧症患者观看蜘蛛的视觉呈现，利用事件相关功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来检查恐惧性恐惧的神经关联。与对照组受试者相比，基于感兴趣区域（ROI）分析，蜘蛛恐惧症患者在杏仁核和丘脑枕核中的激活显著增加。此外，体素分析显示，在前扣带回皮质、左侧岛叶皮质以及双侧辅助运动区中，与恐惧症特异性图片相关的激活在双侧均增加。这些发现证实了杏仁核参与恐惧相关刺激的处理，正如最近一项研究所发现的那样。此外，丘脑的研究结果支持了在恐惧性恐惧过程中存在一条外膝状体纹状体通路的参与。
