Sánchez-Navarro Juan P, Driscoll David, Anderson Steven W, Tranel Daniel, Bechara Antoine, Buchanan Tony W
Department of Human Anatomy and Psychobiology, University of Murcia.
Department of Neurology, University of Iowa.
Behav Neurosci. 2014 Feb;128(1):1-11. doi: 10.1037/a0035415. Epub 2013 Dec 30.
The prefrontal cortex (PFC), especially the medial sector, plays a crucial role in emotional processing. Damage to this region results in impaired processing of emotional information, perhaps attributable to an inability to initiate and maintain attention toward emotional materials, a process that is normally automatic. Childhood onset damage to the PFC impairs emotional processing more than adult-onset PFC damage. The aim of this work was to study the involvement of the PFC in attention to emotional stimuli, and to explore how age at lesion onset affects this involvement. To address these issues, we studied both the emotional and attentional modulation of the startle reflex. Our sample was composed of 4 patients with childhood-onset PFC damage, 6 patients with adult-onset PFC damage, and 10 healthy comparison participants. Subjects viewed 54 affective pictures; acoustic startle probes were presented at 300 ms after picture onset in 18 pictures (as an index of attentional modulation) and at 3,800 ms after picture onset in 18 pictures (as an index of emotional modulation). Childhood-onset PFC patients did not show attentional or emotional modulation of the response, in contrast to adult-onset PFC damage and comparison participants. Early onset damage to the PFC results, therefore, in more severe dysfunction in the processing of affective stimuli than adult-onset PFC damage, perhaps reflecting limited plasticity in the neural systems that support these processes.
前额叶皮质（PFC），尤其是内侧部分，在情绪处理中起着关键作用。该区域受损会导致情绪信息处理受损，这可能归因于无法启动并维持对情绪材料的注意力，而这一过程在正常情况下是自动进行的。儿童期发病的PFC损伤比成年期发病的PFC损伤对情绪处理的损害更大。这项研究的目的是探究PFC在对情绪刺激的注意力方面所起的作用，并探讨损伤发病年龄如何影响这一作用。为了解决这些问题，我们研究了惊吓反射的情绪和注意力调节。我们的样本包括4名儿童期发病的PFC损伤患者、6名成年期发病的PFC损伤患者以及10名健康对照参与者。受试者观看54张情感图片；在图片呈现后300毫秒时，对18张图片呈现听觉惊吓探测（作为注意力调节的指标），在图片呈现后3800毫秒时，对另外18张图片呈现听觉惊吓探测（作为情绪调节的指标）。与成年期发病的PFC损伤患者和对照参与者不同，儿童期发病的PFC患者未表现出对反应的注意力或情绪调节。因此，PFC的早期发病损伤导致在情感刺激处理方面比成年期发病的PFC损伤存在更严重的功能障碍，这可能反映了支持这些过程的神经系统可塑性有限。
