Sato Wataru, Kochiyama Takanori, Uono Shota, Yoshikawa Sakiko, Toichi Motomi
Department of Neurodevelopmental Psychiatry, Habilitation and Rehabilitation, Graduate School of Medicine and.
Brain Activity Imaging Center, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Soraku-gun, Kyoto 619-0288, Japan.
Cereb Cortex. 2017 Mar 1;27(3):1878-1890. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhw036.
Dynamic facial expressions of emotion strongly elicit multifaceted emotional, perceptual, cognitive, and motor responses. Neuroimaging studies revealed that some subcortical (e.g., amygdala) and neocortical (e.g., superior temporal sulcus and inferior frontal gyrus) brain regions and their functional interaction were involved in processing dynamic facial expressions. However, the direction of the functional interaction between the amygdala and the neocortex remains unknown. To investigate this issue, we re-analyzed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 2 studies and magnetoencephalography (MEG) data from 1 study. First, a psychophysiological interaction analysis of the fMRI data confirmed the functional interaction between the amygdala and neocortical regions. Then, dynamic causal modeling analysis was used to compare models with forward, backward, or bidirectional effective connectivity between the amygdala and neocortical networks in the fMRI and MEG data. The results consistently supported the model of effective connectivity from the amygdala to the neocortex. Further increasing time-window analysis of the MEG demonstrated that this model was valid after 200 ms from the stimulus onset. These data suggest that emotional processing in the amygdala rapidly modulates some neocortical processing, such as perception, recognition, and motor mimicry, when observing dynamic facial expressions of emotion.
动态面部表情能强烈引发多方面的情绪、感知、认知和运动反应。神经影像学研究表明，一些皮层下（如杏仁核）和新皮层（如颞上沟和额下回）脑区及其功能相互作用参与了动态面部表情的处理。然而，杏仁核与新皮层之间功能相互作用的方向仍不清楚。为了研究这个问题，我们重新分析了两项研究中的功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据和一项研究中的脑磁图（MEG）数据。首先，对fMRI数据进行心理生理相互作用分析，证实了杏仁核与新皮层区域之间的功能相互作用。然后，使用动态因果模型分析来比较fMRI和MEG数据中杏仁核与新皮层网络之间具有正向、反向或双向有效连接的模型。结果一致支持从杏仁核到新皮层的有效连接模型。对MEG进一步增加时间窗分析表明，该模型在刺激开始后200毫秒有效。这些数据表明，当观察动态面部表情时，杏仁核中的情绪处理会迅速调节一些新皮层处理，如感知、识别和运动模仿。
