Institute of Medical Psychology & Behavioral Immunobiology, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Hufelandstr. 55, 45122, Essen, Germany.
Cerebellum. 2014 Feb;13(1):1-8. doi: 10.1007/s12311-013-0512-9.
The cerebellum is increasingly recognized to contribute to non-motor functions, including cognition and emotion. Although fear conditioning has been studied for elucidating the pathophysiology of anxiety, the putative role of the cerebellum is still unknown. Fear conditioning could also be important in the etiology of chronic abdominal pain which often overlaps with anxiety. Hence, in this exploratory analysis, we investigated conditioned anticipatory activity in the cerebellum in a visceral aversive fear conditioning paradigm using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We extended and reanalyzed a previous dataset for different learning phases, i.e., acquisition, extinction, and reinstatement, utilizing an advanced normalizing method of the cerebellum. In 30 healthy humans, visual conditioned stimuli (CS(+)) were paired with painful rectal distensions as unconditioned stimuli (US), while other visual stimuli (CS(-)) were presented without US. During extinction, all CSs were presented without US, whereas during reinstatement, a single, unpaired US was presented. During acquisition, posterolateral cerebellar areas including Crus I, Crus II, and VIIb and parts of the dentate nucleus were activated in response to the CS(+) compared to the CS(-). During extinction, activation related to CS(+) presentation was detected in Crus I, Crus II, IV, V, VI, VIIb, IX, and vermis. Neural correlates of reinstatement were found in Crus I, Crus II, IV, V, and IX. We could show for the first time that the cerebellum is involved in abdominal pain-related associative learning processes. Together, these findings contribute to our understanding of the cerebellum in aversive learning and memory processes relevant to the pathophysiology of chronic abdominal pain.
小脑越来越被认为有助于非运动功能，包括认知和情绪。虽然恐惧条件反射已被用于阐明焦虑症的病理生理学，但小脑的假定作用仍不清楚。恐惧条件反射在慢性腹痛的病因中也可能很重要，因为慢性腹痛常与焦虑重叠。因此，在这项探索性分析中，我们使用功能磁共振成像研究了内脏厌恶恐惧条件反射范式中小脑的条件性预期活动。我们扩展并重新分析了之前的数据集，用于不同的学习阶段，即获得、消退和再巩固，利用小脑的先进归一化方法。在 30 名健康人中，视觉条件刺激（CS(+)) 与疼痛性直肠扩张配对作为非条件刺激（US），而其他视觉刺激（CS(-)) 则没有 US 呈现。在消退期间，所有 CS 都没有 US 呈现，而在再巩固期间，仅呈现单个非配对 US。在获得阶段，与 CS(-)) 相比，后外侧小脑区域包括 Crus I、Crus II 和 VIIb 以及部分齿状核在对 CS(+)的反应中被激活。在消退期间，在 Crus I、Crus II、IV、V、VI、VIIb、IX 和蚓部检测到与 CS(+)呈现相关的激活。再巩固的神经相关性存在于 Crus I、Crus II、IV、V 和 IX。我们首次表明，小脑参与了与慢性腹痛相关的关联学习过程。这些发现共同增进了我们对小脑在与慢性腹痛病理生理学相关的厌恶学习和记忆过程中的理解。
