Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA ; Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2013 Jun 5;7:200. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00200. eCollection 2013.
Prompt responses to emotional, potentially threatening, stimuli are supported by neural mechanisms that allow for privileged access of emotional information to processing resources. The existence of these mechanisms can also make emotional stimuli potent distracters, particularly when task-irrelevant. The ability to deploy cognitive control in order to cope with emotional distraction is essential for adaptive behavior, while reduced control may lead to enhanced emotional distractibility, which is often a hallmark of affective disorders. Evidence suggests that increased susceptibility to emotional distraction is linked to changes in the processing of emotional information that affect both the basic response to and coping with emotional distraction, but the neural correlates of these phenomena are not clear. The present review discusses emerging evidence from brain imaging studies addressing these issues, and highlights the following three aspects. First, the response to emotional distraction is associated with opposing patterns of activity in a ventral "hot" affective system (HotEmo, showing increased activity) and a dorsal "cold" executive system (ColdEx, showing decreased activity). Second, coping with emotional distraction involves top-down control in order to counteract the bottom-up influence of emotional distraction, and involves interactions between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Third, both the response to and coping with emotional distraction are influenced by individual differences affecting emotional sensitivity and distractibility, which are linked to alterations of both HotEmo and ColdEx neural systems. Collectively, the available evidence identifies specific neural signatures of the response to emotional challenge, which are fundamental to understanding the mechanisms of emotion-cognition interactions in healthy functioning, and the changes linked to individual variation in emotional distractibility and susceptibility to affective disorders.
情绪刺激的快速反应受到神经机制的支持，这些机制使情绪信息能够优先获得处理资源。这些机制的存在也使得情绪刺激成为强大的分心物，尤其是当它们与任务无关时。为了应对情绪分心而部署认知控制的能力对于适应性行为至关重要，而控制能力的降低可能导致情绪分心的增强，这通常是情感障碍的一个标志。有证据表明，对情绪分心的易感性增加与情绪信息处理的变化有关，这些变化影响到对情绪分心的基本反应和应对，但这些现象的神经相关性尚不清楚。本综述讨论了来自大脑成像研究的新证据，强调了以下三个方面。首先，对情绪分心的反应与腹侧“热”情感系统（HotEmo，表现出增加的活动）和背侧“冷”执行系统（ColdEx，表现出减少的活动）中的相反活动模式有关。其次，应对情绪分心需要自上而下的控制，以抵消情绪分心的自下而上的影响，涉及杏仁核和前额叶皮层之间的相互作用。第三，对情绪分心的反应和应对都受到影响情绪敏感性和分心的个体差异的影响，这些差异与 HotEmo 和 ColdEx 神经网络系统的改变有关。总的来说，现有证据确定了对情绪挑战的反应的特定神经特征，这些特征对于理解健康功能中情绪与认知相互作用的机制以及与情绪分心和易感性个体差异相关的变化至关重要。
