Williams Leanne M, Mathersul Danielle, Palmer Donna M, Gur Ruben C, Gur Raquel E, Gordon Evian
Brain Dynamics Centre, Westmead Millennium Institute & Western Clinical School, University of Sydney, Westmead Hospital, Westmead, New South Wales, Australia.
J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2009 Apr;31(3):257-77. doi: 10.1080/13803390802255635. Epub 2008 Aug 19.
A number of psychiatric and neurological disorders are characterized by impairments in facial emotion recognition. Recognition of individual emotions has implicated limbic, basal ganglionic, and frontal brain regions. Since these regions are also implicated in age-related decline and sex differences in emotion processing, an understanding of normative variation is important for assessing deficits in clinical groups. An internet-based test ("WebNeuro") was administered to 1,000 healthy participants (6 to 91 years, 53% female) to assess explicit identification of basic expressions of emotion (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, neutral). A subsequent implicit recognition condition was based on a priming protocol, in which explicit identification provided the "study" phase. Responses were most accurate for happiness and slowest for fear in the explicit condition, but least accurate for happiness and fastest for fear in the implicit condition. The effects of age, by contrast, showed a similar pattern for both explicit and implicit conditions, following a nonlinear distribution in which performance improved from childhood through adolescence and early adulthood and declined in later adulthood. Females were better than males at explicit identification of fear in particular. These findings are consistent with the priority of threat-related signals, but indicate opposing biases depending on whether emotion processing is conscious or nonconscious. The lifespan trends in emotion processing over 10 decades point to an interaction of brain-based (maturation, stability, and then atrophy of cortical and subcortical systems) and experiential contributing factors. These findings provide a robust normative platform for assessing clinical groups.
许多精神和神经疾病的特征是面部情绪识别受损。对个体情绪的识别涉及边缘系统、基底神经节和额叶脑区。由于这些区域也与情绪处理中与年龄相关的衰退和性别差异有关，因此了解正常变异对于评估临床群体的缺陷很重要。对1000名健康参与者（6至91岁，53%为女性）进行了一项基于互联网的测试（“网络神经测试”），以评估对基本情绪表达（快乐、悲伤、恐惧、愤怒、厌恶、中性）的明确识别。随后的内隐识别条件基于启动协议，其中明确识别提供“学习”阶段。在明确条件下，对快乐的反应最准确，对恐惧的反应最慢，但在内隐条件下，对快乐的反应最不准确，对恐惧的反应最快。相比之下，年龄的影响在明确和内隐条件下都呈现出类似的模式，遵循一种非线性分布，即从童年到青春期和成年早期表现有所改善，而在成年后期则下降。特别是在明确识别恐惧方面，女性比男性表现更好。这些发现与威胁相关信号的优先性一致，但表明根据情绪处理是有意识还是无意识存在相反的偏差。十年来情绪处理的寿命趋势表明，基于大脑的因素（皮层和皮层下系统的成熟、稳定，然后萎缩）和经验因素之间存在相互作用。这些发现为评估临床群体提供了一个强大的正常标准平台。
