Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 7EF, UK.
Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 2PY, UK.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2018 May 1;13(5):525-534. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsy019.
There is accumulating evidence that youths with antisocial behavior or psychopathic traits show deficits in facial emotion recognition, but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these impairments. A number of neuroimaging studies have investigated brain activity during facial emotion processing in youths with Conduct Disorder (CD) and adults with psychopathy, but few of these studies tested for group differences in effective connectivity-i.e. changes in connectivity during emotion processing. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and psycho-physiological interaction methods, we investigated the impact of CD and psychopathic traits on amygdala activity and effective connectivity in 46 male youths with CD and 25 typically-developing controls when processing emotional faces. All participants were aged 16-21 years. Relative to controls, youths with CD showed reduced amygdala activity when processing angry or sad faces relative to neutral faces, but the groups did not significantly differ in amygdala-related effective connectivity. In contrast, psychopathic traits were negatively correlated with amygdala-ventral anterior cingulate cortex connectivity for angry vs neutral faces, but were unrelated to amygdala responses to angry or sad faces. These findings suggest that CD and psychopathic traits have differential effects on amygdala activation and functional interactions between limbic regions during facial emotion processing.
越来越多的证据表明，具有反社会行为或精神病特质的年轻人在面部情绪识别方面存在缺陷，但对于这些缺陷的神经机制知之甚少。许多神经影像学研究已经调查了患有品行障碍（CD）的年轻人和患有精神病的成年人在面部情绪处理过程中的大脑活动，但这些研究中很少有测试组间有效连接的差异，即在情绪处理过程中连接的变化。使用功能磁共振成像和心理生理交互方法，我们研究了 46 名患有 CD 的男性青少年和 25 名正常发育的对照组在处理情绪面孔时，CD 和精神病特质对杏仁核活动和有效连接的影响。所有参与者的年龄在 16 到 21 岁之间。与对照组相比，患有 CD 的年轻人在处理愤怒或悲伤面孔时相对于中性面孔表现出杏仁核活动减少，但两组在杏仁核相关的有效连接方面没有显著差异。相比之下，精神病特质与愤怒与中性面孔时的杏仁核-腹侧前扣带回连接呈负相关，但与愤怒或悲伤面孔时的杏仁核反应无关。这些发现表明，CD 和精神病特质对面部情绪处理过程中杏仁核激活和边缘区域之间的功能相互作用有不同的影响。
