Erk Susanne, Kleczar Anna, Walter Henrik
Department of Psychiatry, Division of Medical Psychology, University of Bonn, Sigmund-Freud-Str. 25, D-53105 Bonn, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2007 Aug 15;37(2):623-32. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.05.006. Epub 2007 May 18.
The modulatory effects of emotional context on episodic memory have been shown recently. We were interested whether working memory is similarly susceptible to emotional context or whether working memory helps to distract from emotion, i.e. serves to downregulate emotional reactions in order to sustain the prior intention. We tested the effects of emotional stimulation during active maintenance of information by modulating the emotional context of maintenance processes in a Sternberg item recognition task with two load conditions. Behavioral data revealed no impairment of working memory performance during emotional context. Actually, behavioral performance was better for emotional compared to neutral context during high load. Furthermore, emotional context had no interference effect on working memory-related brain activation. Instead, we found a valence-specific regulation effect: High cognitive effort was associated with reduced activity in emotion processing regions, i.e. the amygdala and ventral striatum. This effect was mediated by different prefrontal regions, i.e. by left inferior PFC for negative and left superior PFC for positive valence. Furthermore, our results reveal an integration effect of emotion and cognition in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex showing increased recruitment with increasing complexity of the task. The results presented here are of relevance for the understanding of regulatory mechanisms and diseases characterized by increased susceptibility to emotional distraction.
情绪背景对情景记忆的调节作用最近已得到证实。我们感兴趣的是，工作记忆是否同样容易受到情绪背景的影响，或者工作记忆是否有助于分散对情绪的注意力，即是否有助于下调情绪反应以维持先前的意图。我们通过在具有两种负荷条件的斯特恩伯格项目识别任务中调节维持过程的情绪背景，测试了在信息的主动维持期间情绪刺激的影响。行为数据显示，在情绪背景下工作记忆表现没有受损。实际上，在高负荷情况下，与中性背景相比，情绪背景下的行为表现更好。此外，情绪背景对与工作记忆相关的大脑激活没有干扰作用。相反，我们发现了一种效价特异性调节效应：高认知努力与情绪处理区域（即杏仁核和腹侧纹状体）的活动减少有关。这种效应由不同的前额叶区域介导，即负性效价由左下前额叶介导，正性效价由左上前额叶介导。此外，我们的结果揭示了右背外侧前额叶皮质中情绪与认知的整合效应，随着任务复杂性的增加，该区域的募集增加。这里呈现的结果对于理解调节机制以及以对情绪干扰易感性增加为特征的疾病具有重要意义。
