Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany.
Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
Biol Psychol. 2022 Sep;173:108399. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108399. Epub 2022 Jul 16.
Face processing is biased by emotional and voluntarily directed attention, both of which modulate processing in distributed cortical areas. The amygdala is assumed to contribute to an attentional bias for emotional faces, although its interaction with directed attention awaits further clarification. Here, we studied the interaction of emotion and attention during face processing via scalp EEG potentials of healthy participants and intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings of the right amygdala in one patient. Three randomized blocks consisting of angry, neutral, and happy facial expressions were presented, and one expression was denoted as the target category in each block. Happy targets were detected fastest and most accurately both in the group study and by the iEEG patient. Occipital scalp potentials revealed emotion differentiation for happy faces in the early posterior negativity (EPN) around 300 ms after stimulus onset regardless of the target condition. A similar response to happy faces occurred in the amygdala only for happy targets. On the scalp, a late positive potential (LPP, around 600 ms) enhancement for targets occurred for all target conditions alike. A simultaneous late signal in the amygdala was largest for emotional targets. No late signal enhancements were found for neutral targets in the amygdala. Cortical modulations, by contrast, showed both attention-independent effects of emotion and emotion-independent effects of attention. These results demonstrate an attention-dependence of amygdala activity during the processing of facial expressions and partly independent cortical mechanisms.
面部处理受到情绪和自愿引导注意的影响，这两者都调节分布式皮质区域的处理。杏仁核被认为有助于对情绪面孔的注意力偏向，尽管它与定向注意力的相互作用尚待进一步澄清。在这里，我们通过健康参与者的头皮 EEG 电位和一名患者的右杏仁核的颅内 EEG (iEEG) 记录研究了面部处理过程中情绪和注意力的相互作用。三个随机块由愤怒、中性和快乐的面部表情组成，每个块中的一个表情被标记为目标类别。在组研究和 iEEG 患者中，快乐目标的检测速度最快，准确性最高。枕部头皮电位显示，无论目标条件如何，在刺激开始后 300 毫秒左右的后期负性（EPN）中，快乐面孔会出现情绪分化。仅在快乐目标的情况下，杏仁核中也会对快乐面孔产生类似的反应。在头皮上，对于所有目标条件，目标的晚期正电位（LPP，约 600 毫秒）增强。情绪目标的同时晚期信号最大。杏仁核中未发现中性目标的晚期信号增强。相比之下，皮质调节显示了情绪的非注意依赖性效应和注意的非情绪依赖性效应。这些结果表明，杏仁核在处理面部表情时的活动具有注意力依赖性，并且具有部分独立的皮质机制。
