Meffert Harma, Brislin Sarah J, White Stuart F, Blair James R
Section of Affective and Cognitive Neuroscience, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, and Clinical Psychology Program, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306
Section of Affective and Cognitive Neuroscience, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, and Clinical Psychology Program, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2015 Apr;10(4):537-44. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsu085. Epub 2014 Jun 17.
Social referencing paradigms in humans and observational learning paradigms in animals suggest that emotional expressions are important for communicating valence. It has been proposed that these expressions initiate stimulus-reinforcement learning. Relatively little is known about the role of emotional expressions in reinforcement learning, particularly in the context of social referencing. In this study, we examined object valence learning in the context of a social referencing paradigm. Participants viewed objects and faces that turned toward the objects and displayed a fearful, happy or neutral reaction to them, while judging the gender of these faces. Notably, amygdala activation was larger when the expressions following an object were less expected. Moreover, when asked, participants were both more likely to want to approach, and showed stronger amygdala responses to, objects associated with happy relative to objects associated with fearful expressions. This suggests that the amygdala plays two roles in social referencing: (i) initiating learning regarding the valence of an object as a function of prediction errors to expressions displayed toward this object and (ii) orchestrating an emotional response to the object when value judgments are being made regarding this object.
人类的社会参照范式和动物的观察性学习范式表明，情绪表达对于传达效价很重要。有人提出，这些表达会启动刺激-强化学习。关于情绪表达在强化学习中的作用，尤其是在社会参照背景下，人们了解得相对较少。在本研究中，我们在社会参照范式的背景下考察了物体效价学习。参与者观看物体以及转向物体并对其表现出恐惧、高兴或中性反应的面部，同时判断这些面部的性别。值得注意的是，当物体之后的表情较出乎意料时，杏仁核的激活程度更大。此外，当被问及时，参与者更有可能想要接近与高兴表情相关的物体，并且相对于与恐惧表情相关的物体，对这些物体表现出更强的杏仁核反应。这表明杏仁核在社会参照中发挥两个作用：（i）根据对指向该物体的表情的预测误差，启动关于物体效价的学习；（ii）当对该物体进行价值判断时，协调对该物体的情绪反应。
