System Emotional Science, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Toyama, Toyama 930-0194, Japan.
Behav Brain Res. 2010 Dec 20;215(1):129-35. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2010.07.009. Epub 2010 Jul 17.
Recent psychological studies suggest that the amygdala is not essential for early stages of emotional facial processing, and that the colliculo-pulvinar pathway might play this role. Nevertheless, the actual role of pulvinar nucleus on the recognition of emotional faces remains obscure. In the present study, we recorded single-unit activity of pulvinar neurons in 2 monkeys during recognition of emotional faces in a delayed non-match-to-sample (DNMS) task, using human face stimuli with differing emotional expressions (sad, angry, happy, surprised and neutral) and simple geometric pattern control figures. A total of 184 single neurons from lateral and medial pulvinar have been sampled. From this total, 41 (22.2%) were found to be "visually responsive", that is, responded to one or more of the visual stimuli. Among the visually responsive neurons, 23 responded non-differentially to all stimuli (facial stimuli and control). Another 18 responded differentially to facial identity and/or emotional expression. Response latencies of the pulvinar neurons to these facial stimuli ranged very widely; firing onsets for 16 (39.0%, 16/41) neurons were shorter than 100ms, while for 13 (31.7%, 13/41) it was greater than 300ms. The results thus indicate that 43.9% of the visually responsive pulvinar neurons differentially responded to the emotional expressions of the human faces. Furthermore, wide distribution of the response latencies of the pulvinar neurons suggests that pulvinar neurons might mediate intracortical connections as well as the fast subcortical pathway to the amygdala. These results highlight a role of the pulvinar in the processing of emotional facial stimuli.
最近的心理学研究表明，杏仁核对于情绪面部处理的早期阶段并非必不可少，而丘系下核团可能发挥了这一作用。然而，丘脑枕在情绪面孔识别中的实际作用仍不清楚。在本研究中，我们在两只猴子中记录了丘系下核神经元在延迟非匹配样本（DNMS）任务中识别情绪面孔时的单细胞活动，使用具有不同情绪表达（悲伤、愤怒、快乐、惊讶和中性）和简单几何图案对照图形的人类面孔刺激。总共从外侧和内侧丘系下核中取样了 184 个单个神经元。在这总数中，有 41 个（22.2%）被发现是“视觉反应性”，即对一个或多个视觉刺激有反应。在视觉反应性神经元中，有 23 个对所有刺激（面部刺激和对照）表现出非差异反应。另有 18 个对面部身份和/或情绪表达表现出差异反应。丘系下核神经元对这些面部刺激的反应潜伏期差异很大；16 个（39.0%，16/41）神经元的点火起始时间短于 100ms，而 13 个（31.7%，13/41）神经元的点火起始时间大于 300ms。结果表明，43.9%的视觉反应性丘脑枕神经元对人类面部表情表现出差异反应。此外，丘系下核神经元反应潜伏期的广泛分布表明，丘系下核神经元可能介导皮质内连接以及到杏仁核的快速皮质下通路。这些结果突出了丘脑枕在处理情绪面部刺激中的作用。
