Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2013 Jul;89(1):26-36. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.04.020. Epub 2013 May 2.
Recent progress in cognitive neuroscience suggests that alpha activity may reflect selective cortical inhibition involved in signal amplification, rather than neural idling. Unfortunately, these theoretical advances remain largely ignored in affective neuroscience. To address this limitation the present paper proposes a novel research avenue aimed at using alpha to elucidate cortical inhibitory mechanisms involved in affective processes. The proposal is illustrated by developing inhibitory accounts of affective attention and affective tuning phenomena. The emergent predictions were tested using event-related perturbations from 73 students evaluating affective and nonaffective aspects of five types of emotional images. The results revealed that upper alpha power was increased by affective content in general and aversive stimuli in particular from 350 ms at posterior and from 575 ms at central sites. The evaluation task interacted with affective content only at a liberal statistical significance level in late posterior alpha. These results are generally in line with the proposed inhibitory accounts of affective attention and tuning, although the evidence is preliminary rather than conclusive. As confirmation of functional origins of alpha in affect remains beyond the scope of a single study, this paper aims to inspire further extrapolation of the inhibitory account of alpha within affective neuroscience.
认知神经科学的最新进展表明，α 活动可能反映了信号放大过程中涉及的选择性皮质抑制，而不是神经空闲。不幸的是，这些理论上的进展在情感神经科学中基本上被忽视了。为了解决这个局限性，本文提出了一个新的研究途径，旨在利用α来阐明情感过程中涉及的皮质抑制机制。该建议通过发展情感注意和情感调谐现象的抑制性解释来举例说明。通过对 73 名学生评估五种情绪图像的情感和非情感方面的事件相关干扰，对涌现的预测进行了测试。结果表明，一般来说，α 功率在上部和中央部位的后部从 350 毫秒和 575 毫秒处增加，而在后部和中央部位的后部从 350 毫秒和 575 毫秒处增加。评估任务仅在宽松的统计显著水平上与情感内容相互作用，仅在晚期后部α中。这些结果与情感注意和调谐的拟议抑制性解释基本一致，尽管证据还不是结论性的。由于对情感中α的功能起源的确认仍然超出了单个研究的范围，因此本文旨在激励在情感神经科学中进一步推断α的抑制性解释。
