Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Forensic Psychiatric Centre Pompestichting, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Collaborative Antwerp Psychiatric Research Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; Centre for Psychology, Behaviour, & Achievement, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom.
Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London, United Kingdom; Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom; Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Trieste, Italy.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2017 Nov;2(8):689-695. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2017.04.005. Epub 2017 Apr 22.
Psychopathy has repeatedly been linked to disturbed associative learning from aversive events (i.e., threat conditioning). Optimal threat conditioning requires the generation of internal representations of stimulus-outcome contingencies and the rate with which these may change. Because mental representations are imperfect, there will always be uncertainty about the accuracy of representations in the brain (i.e., representational uncertainty). However, it remains unclear 1) to what extent threat conditioning is susceptible to different types of uncertainty in representations about contingencies during the acquisition phase and 2) how representational uncertainty relates to psychopathic features.
A computational model was applied to functional neuroimaging data to estimate uncertainty in representations of contingencies (CoUn) and the rate of change of contingencies (RUn), respectively, from brain activation during the acquisition phase of threat conditioning in 132 adolescents at risk of developing antisocial personality profiles. Next, the associations between these two types of representational uncertainty and psychopathy-related dimensions were examined.
The left and right amygdala activations were associated with CoUn, while the bilateral insula and the right amygdala were associated with RUn. Different patterns of relationships were found between psychopathic features and each type of uncertainty. Callous-unemotional traits and impulsive-irresponsible traits uniquely predicted increased CoUn, while only impulsive-irresponsible traits predicted increased RUn.
The findings suggest that 1) the insula and amygdala differ in how these regions are affected by different types of representational uncertainty during threat conditioning and 2) CoUn and RUn have different patterns of relationships with psychopathy-related dimensions.
精神变态与从厌恶事件（即威胁条件作用）中产生的关联学习障碍有关。最佳的威胁条件作用需要生成刺激-结果关联的内部表示，以及这些表示变化的速度。由于心理表示是不完美的，因此大脑中表示的准确性总会存在不确定性（即表示不确定性）。然而，目前尚不清楚 1）在获取阶段，威胁条件作用对有关关联的表示中不同类型的不确定性的敏感程度，以及 2）表示不确定性与精神变态特征之间的关系。
应用计算模型来分析功能神经影像学数据，以分别估计威胁条件作用获取阶段大脑激活过程中表示关联的不确定性（CoUn）和关联变化率（RUn）。在 132 名有发展反社会人格特征风险的青少年中进行了研究。接下来，研究了这两种表示不确定性与与精神变态相关维度之间的关系。
左侧和右侧杏仁核的激活与 CoUn 相关，而双侧岛叶和右侧杏仁核与 RUn 相关。在精神变态特征与每种不确定性之间发现了不同的关系模式。冷酷无情的特质和冲动不负责任的特质可唯一预测 CoUn 的增加，而只有冲动不负责任的特质可预测 RUn 的增加。
这些发现表明 1）岛叶和杏仁核在威胁条件作用过程中受不同类型的表示不确定性影响的方式不同，以及 2）CoUn 和 RUn 与精神变态相关维度的关系模式不同。
