Bo Ke, Yin Siyang, Liu Yuelu, Hu Zhenhong, Meyyappan Sreenivasan, Kim Sungkean, Keil Andreas, Ding Mingzhou
J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, CA 95618, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2021 May 10;31(6):3047-3063. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa411.
The perception of opportunities and threats in complex visual scenes represents one of the main functions of the human visual system. The underlying neurophysiology is often studied by having observers view pictures varying in affective content. It has been shown that viewing emotionally engaging, compared with neutral, pictures (1) heightens blood flow in limbic, frontoparietal, and anterior visual structures and (2) enhances the late positive event-related potential (LPP). The role of retinotopic visual cortex in this process has, however, been contentious, with competing theories predicting the presence versus absence of emotion-specific signals in retinotopic visual areas. Recording simultaneous electroencephalography-functional magnetic resonance imaging while observers viewed pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral affective pictures, and applying multivariate pattern analysis, we found that (1) unpleasant versus neutral and pleasant versus neutral decoding accuracy were well above chance level in retinotopic visual areas, (2) decoding accuracy in ventral visual cortex (VVC), but not in early or dorsal visual cortex, was correlated with LPP, and (3) effective connectivity from amygdala to VVC predicted unpleasant versus neutral decoding accuracy, whereas effective connectivity from ventral frontal cortex to VVC predicted pleasant versus neutral decoding accuracy. These results suggest that affective scenes evoke valence-specific neural representations in retinotopic visual cortex and that these representations are influenced by reentry signals from anterior brain regions.
对复杂视觉场景中机遇与威胁的感知是人类视觉系统的主要功能之一。潜在的神经生理学机制通常通过让观察者观看情感内容各异的图片来进行研究。研究表明，与观看中性图片相比，观看情感丰富的图片（1）会增加边缘系统、额顶叶和前部视觉结构的血流量，（2）增强晚期正性事件相关电位（LPP）。然而，视网膜拓扑视觉皮层在这一过程中的作用一直存在争议，相互竞争的理论预测视网膜拓扑视觉区域中存在或不存在情感特异性信号。在观察者观看愉悦、不悦和中性情感图片时同步记录脑电图-功能磁共振成像，并应用多变量模式分析，我们发现：（1）在视网膜拓扑视觉区域，不悦与中性以及愉悦与中性的解码准确率远高于机遇水平；（2）腹侧视觉皮层（VVC）而非早期或背侧视觉皮层的解码准确率与LPP相关；（3）从杏仁核到VVC的有效连接预测了不悦与中性的解码准确率，而从腹侧额叶皮层到VVC的有效连接预测了愉悦与中性的解码准确率。这些结果表明，情感场景在视网膜拓扑视觉皮层中唤起了效价特异性神经表征，并且这些表征受到来自前脑区域的折返信号的影响。
