Département de Physiologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Neuroimage. 2010 Oct 15;53(1):355-63. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.05.037. Epub 2010 May 25.
The communication of pain requires the perception of pain-related signals and the extraction of their meaning and magnitude to infer the state of the expresser. Here, BOLD responses were measured in healthy volunteers while they evaluated the amount of pain expressed (pain task) or discriminated movements (movement task) in one-second video clips displaying facial expressions of various levels of pain. Regression analysis using subjects' ratings of pain confirmed the parametric response of several regions previously involved in the coding of self-pain, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and anterior insula (aINS), as well as areas implicated in action observation, and motor mirroring, such as the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Furthermore, the pain task produced stronger activation in the ventral IFG, as well as in areas of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) associated with social cognition and emotional mirroring, whereas stronger activation during the movement task predominated in the IPL. These results suggest that perception of the pain of another via facial expression recruits limbic regions involved in the coding of self-pain, prefrontal areas underlying social and emotional cognition (i.e. 'mentalizing'), and premotor and parietal areas involved in motor mirroring.
疼痛的交流需要感知与疼痛相关的信号，并提取其意义和大小，以推断表达者的状态。在这里，在健康志愿者评估显示不同程度疼痛的面部表情的一秒钟视频片段中表达的疼痛量（疼痛任务）或区分运动（运动任务）时，测量了大脑的血氧水平依赖（BOLD）反应。使用受试者对疼痛的评分进行的回归分析证实了先前涉及自我疼痛编码的几个区域的参数反应，包括前扣带皮层（ACC）和前岛叶（aINS），以及与动作观察和运动镜像相关的区域，例如下额叶（IFG）和下顶叶（IPL）。此外，疼痛任务在腹侧 IFG 以及与社会认知和情感镜像相关的内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）区域产生更强的激活，而在运动任务期间更强的激活则主要在 IPL 中占主导地位。这些结果表明，通过面部表情感知他人的疼痛会招募涉及自我疼痛编码的边缘区域、与社会和情感认知（即“心理化”）相关的前额叶区域，以及涉及运动镜像的运动前和顶叶区域。
