Herbert Cornelia, Ethofer Thomas, Anders Silke, Junghofer Markus, Wildgruber Dirk, Grodd Wolfgang, Kissler Johanna
Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2009 Mar;4(1):35-49. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsn027. Epub 2008 Sep 27.
This event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated brain activity elicited by emotional adjectives during silent reading without specific processing instructions. Fifteen healthy volunteers were asked to read a set of randomly presented high-arousing emotional (pleasant and unpleasant) and low-arousing neutral adjectives. Silent reading of emotional in contrast to neutral adjectives evoked enhanced activations in visual, limbic and prefrontal brain regions. In particular, reading pleasant adjectives produced a more robust activation pattern in the left amygdala and the left extrastriate visual cortex than did reading unpleasant or neutral adjectives. Moreover, extrastriate visual cortex and amygdala activity were significantly correlated during reading of pleasant adjectives. Furthermore, pleasant adjectives were better remembered than unpleasant and neutral adjectives in a surprise free recall test conducted after scanning. Thus, visual processing was biased towards pleasant words and involved the amygdala, underscoring recent theoretical views of a general role of the human amygdala in relevance detection for both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli. Results indicate preferential processing of pleasant information in healthy young adults and can be accounted for within the framework of appraisal theory.
这项与事件相关的功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究，调查了在无特定加工指令的默读过程中，由情感形容词引发的大脑活动。15名健康志愿者被要求阅读一组随机呈现的高唤醒度情感（愉悦和不悦）及低唤醒度中性形容词。与默读中性形容词相比，默读情感形容词会在视觉、边缘系统和前额叶脑区引发更强的激活。特别地，与阅读不悦或中性形容词相比，阅读愉悦形容词会在左侧杏仁核和左侧纹外视觉皮层产生更强健的激活模式。此外，在阅读愉悦形容词过程中，纹外视觉皮层和杏仁核的活动显著相关。而且，在扫描后进行的意外自由回忆测试中，愉悦形容词比不悦和中性形容词被更好地记住。因此，视觉加工偏向于愉悦词汇且涉及杏仁核，这强调了近期关于人类杏仁核在愉悦和不悦刺激的相关性检测中具有普遍作用的理论观点。结果表明健康年轻人对愉悦信息存在优先加工，并且可以用评价理论的框架来解释。
