Hortensius Ruud, de Gelder Beatrice, Schutter Dennis J L G
Brain and Emotion Laboratory, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands.
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Psychophysiology. 2016 Sep;53(9):1307-16. doi: 10.1111/psyp.12685. Epub 2016 Jun 21.
Threat demands fast and adaptive reactions that are manifested at the physiological, behavioral, and phenomenological level and are responsive to the direction of threat and its severity for the individual. Here, we investigated the effects of threat directed toward or away from the observer on motor corticospinal excitability and explicit recognition. Sixteen healthy right-handed volunteers completed a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) task and a separate three-alternative forced-choice emotion recognition task. Single-pulse TMS to the left primary motor cortex was applied to measure motor evoked potentials from the right abductor pollicis brevis in response to dynamic angry, fearful, and neutral bodily expressions with blurred faces directed toward or away from the observer. Results showed that motor corticospinal excitability increased independent of direction of anger compared with fear and neutral. In contrast, anger was better recognized when directed toward the observer compared with when directed away from the observer, while the opposite pattern was found for fear. The present results provide evidence for the differential effects of threat direction on explicit recognition and motor corticospinal excitability. In the face of threat, motor corticospinal excitability increases independently of the direction of anger, indicative of the importance of more automatic reactions to threat.
威胁需要快速且适应性的反应，这些反应体现在生理、行为和现象学层面，并对威胁的方向及其对个体的严重程度做出响应。在此，我们研究了朝向或远离观察者的威胁对运动皮质脊髓兴奋性和明确识别的影响。16名健康的右利手志愿者完成了一项经颅磁刺激（TMS）任务和一项单独的三选一强制选择情绪识别任务。对左侧初级运动皮层施加单脉冲TMS，以测量右侧拇短展肌的运动诱发电位，该电位是对动态愤怒、恐惧和中性的身体表情（面部模糊，朝向或远离观察者）的反应。结果表明，与恐惧和中性表情相比，无论愤怒表情的方向如何，运动皮质脊髓兴奋性都会增加。相比之下，愤怒表情朝向观察者时比远离观察者时更容易被识别，而恐惧表情则呈现相反的模式。目前的结果为威胁方向对明确识别和运动皮质脊髓兴奋性的不同影响提供了证据。面对威胁时，运动皮质脊髓兴奋性会独立于愤怒方向而增加，这表明对威胁做出更自动反应的重要性。
