Denkova Ekaterina, Dolcos Sanda, Dolcos Florin
Alberta Cognitive Neuroscience Group, University of Alberta , Edmonton, AB , Canada.
Psychology Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , Urbana, IL , USA.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2013 Dec 16;7:192. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00192. eCollection 2013.
Although available evidence points to a role of the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) in both emotion processing and autobiographical memory (AM) recollection, it is unclear what the role of this region is in emotional AM recollection. The present study investigated whether IFC activity can be influenced by manipulations of the retrieval focus (emotional vs. non-emotional) and whether this influence is similar for AMs with positive and negative emotional valence. Participants were asked to focus either on emotional (Emotion condition) or on non-emotional contextual (Context condition) details during the elaboration of positive and negative AMs, while fMRI data were collected. The study yielded two main findings: (1) Focusing on Emotion compared to Context during AM recollection was associated with increased activity in bilateral IFC, for positive AMs, whereas negative AMs produced similarly high IFC activity during Emotion and Context conditions; (2) There was a hemispheric dissociation in the IFC linked to the experiencing of emotion and the focus of AM recollection, such that the left IFC activity correlated positively with the subjective re-experience of emotion during the Emotion condition, whereas the right IFC activity correlated negatively with the subjective re-experience of emotion during the Context condition, for both positive and negative AMs. Overall, the present findings suggest that IFC's involvement during the recollection of emotional AMs is susceptible to manipulations of the retrieval focus only in the case of positive AMs, and that this region plays a role in both the enhancement and inhibition of emotional experience during AM recollection.
尽管现有证据表明额下回（IFC）在情绪加工和自传体记忆（AM）回忆中均发挥作用，但该区域在情绪性AM回忆中的作用尚不清楚。本研究调查了IFC活动是否会受到检索焦点（情绪性与非情绪性）操作的影响，以及这种影响对于具有正性和负性情绪效价的AM是否相似。在参与者详细阐述正性和负性AM时，要求他们要么关注情绪性细节（情绪条件），要么关注非情绪性背景细节（背景条件），同时收集功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据。该研究得出了两个主要发现：（1）对于正性AM，与背景条件相比，在AM回忆过程中关注情绪条件与双侧IFC活动增加相关，而对于负性AM，在情绪条件和背景条件下IFC活动同样高；（2）IFC存在与情绪体验和AM回忆焦点相关的半球解离，即对于正性和负性AM，在情绪条件下左侧IFC活动与情绪的主观重新体验呈正相关，而在背景条件下右侧IFC活动与情绪的主观重新体验呈负相关。总体而言，目前的研究结果表明，仅在正性AM的情况下，IFC在情绪性AM回忆过程中的参与易受检索焦点操作的影响，并且该区域在AM回忆过程中对情绪体验的增强和抑制均起作用。
