Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Laboratory of Neurophysiology of Behavior, Biomedical Institute, Federal Fluminense University, Niterói, RJ, Brazil.
Laboratory of Neuroimaging and Psychophysiology, Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.
Neuroimage. 2020 Jul 1;214:116728. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116728. Epub 2020 Mar 19.
A growing literature supports the existence of interactions between emotion and action in the brain, and the central participation of the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC) in this regard. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we sought to investigate the role of self-relevance during such interactions by varying the context in which threating pictures were presented (with guns pointed towards or away from the observer). Participants performed a simple visual detection task following exposure to such stimuli. Except for voxelwise tests, we adopted a Bayesian analysis framework which evaluated evidence for the hypotheses of interest, given the data, in a continuous fashion. Behaviorally, our results demonstrated a valence by context interaction such that there was a tendency of speeding up responses to targets after viewing threat pictures directed towards the participant. In the brain, interaction patterns that paralleled those observed behaviorally were observed most notably in the middle temporal gyrus, supplementary motor area, precentral gyrus, and anterior insula. In these regions, activity was overall greater during threat conditions relative to neutral ones, and this effect was enhanced in the directed towards context. A valence by context interaction was observed in the aMCC too, where we also observed a correlation (across participants) of evoked responses and reaction time data. Taken together, our study revealed the context-sensitive engagement of motor-related areas during emotional perception, thus supporting the idea that emotion and action interact in important ways in the brain.
越来越多的文献支持大脑中情绪和动作之间存在相互作用，而前扣带皮质中部（aMCC）在这方面起着核心作用。在本项功能磁共振成像研究中，我们通过改变威胁图片呈现的背景（枪口指向观察者或远离观察者），试图研究自我相关性在这种相互作用中的作用。参与者在暴露于此类刺激后执行简单的视觉检测任务。除了体素水平检验外，我们还采用了贝叶斯分析框架，该框架以连续的方式评估了给定数据的感兴趣假设的证据。在行为方面，我们的结果表明，在观看指向参与者的威胁图片后，存在对目标反应加快的趋势，这与效价-背景相互作用一致。在大脑中，与观察到的行为模式相似的相互作用模式主要在前颞叶、辅助运动区、中央前回和前岛叶中观察到。在这些区域，与中性条件相比，威胁条件下的整体活动增加，并且这种效应在指向背景中增强。在 aMCC 中也观察到效价-背景相互作用，我们还观察到诱发反应和反应时间数据之间的相关性（跨参与者）。总之，我们的研究揭示了情绪感知过程中运动相关区域的上下文敏感参与，从而支持了大脑中情绪和动作以重要方式相互作用的观点。
