Vuilleumier Patrik
aDepartment of Neuroscience, Medical School, University of Geneva bDepartment of Neurology, University Hospital of Geneva cSwiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Curr Opin Neurol. 2015 Feb;28(1):29-35. doi: 10.1097/WCO.0000000000000159.
It is increasingly recognized that affective values associated with visual stimuli can influence visual perception, attention, and eye movements. Recent research has begun to uncover the brain mechanisms mediating these phenomena. The present review summarizes the main paradigms and findings demonstrating emotional and motivational influences on visual processing.
Several pathways have been identified for enhancing neural responses of cortical visual areas to stimuli with intrinsic emotional value (e.g., facial expressions, social scenes, and others), including projections from the amygdala and ascending modulatory neurotransmitter systems from the brainstem. These pathways can guide attention and gaze to emotionally salient information with either negative (threatening) or positive (rewarding) associations. In addition, abundant research in recent years suggests that probabilistic reward learning can lead to powerful biases in visual attention and saccade control through subcortical pathways connecting visual areas with basal ganglia and superior colliculus. Time-resolved neuroimaging using electroencephalography or magnetoencephalography has begun to tackle the time course of these effects, and can now be complemented by neuroimaging and neurophysiology recordings in monkey.
These findings have implications for understanding and assessing affective biases in perception and attention in patients with psychiatric disorders, such as phobias, depression, and addiction, but also open new avenues for rehabilitation in neurological patients with attention disorders.
人们越来越认识到与视觉刺激相关的情感价值会影响视觉感知、注意力和眼动。最近的研究已开始揭示介导这些现象的脑机制。本综述总结了证明情绪和动机对视觉加工有影响的主要范式和研究结果。
已确定了几种增强皮质视觉区域对具有内在情感价值的刺激（如面部表情、社会场景等）的神经反应的途径，包括来自杏仁核的投射以及来自脑干的上行调节性神经递质系统。这些途径可将注意力和目光导向具有负面（威胁性）或正面（奖励性）关联的情绪显著信息。此外，近年来大量研究表明，概率性奖励学习可通过连接视觉区域与基底神经节及上丘的皮质下通路，导致视觉注意力和扫视控制方面的强大偏差。使用脑电图或脑磁图的时间分辨神经成像已开始研究这些效应的时间进程，现在还可通过对猴子进行神经成像和神经生理学记录来加以补充。
这些发现对于理解和评估患有恐惧症、抑郁症和成瘾症等精神疾病患者在感知和注意力方面的情感偏差具有重要意义，同时也为患有注意力障碍的神经疾病患者的康复开辟了新途径。
