Cognitive Neurology Laboratory, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Eur J Neurosci. 2023 May;57(10):1723-1735. doi: 10.1111/ejn.15975. Epub 2023 Apr 3.
Gaze following is a major element of non-verbal communication and important for successful social interactions. Human gaze following is a fast and almost reflex-like behaviour, yet it can be volitionally controlled and suppressed to some extent if inappropriate or unnecessary, given the social context. In order to identify the neural basis of the cognitive control of gaze following, we carried out an event-related fMRI experiment, in which human subjects' eye movements were tracked while they were exposed to gaze cues in two distinct contexts: A baseline gaze following condition in which subjects were instructed to use gaze cues to shift their attention to a gazed-at spatial target and a control condition in which the subjects were required to ignore the gaze cue and instead to shift their attention to a distinct spatial target to be selected based on a colour mapping rule, requiring the suppression of gaze following. We could identify a suppression-related blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response in a frontoparietal network comprising dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the anterior insula, precuneus, and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). These findings suggest that overexcitation of frontoparietal circuits in turn suppressing the gaze following patch might be a potential cause of gaze following deficits in clinical populations.
注视跟随是非言语交流的主要元素，对成功的社交互动很重要。人类的注视跟随是一种快速且几乎是反射性的行为，但如果社会环境不合适或不必要，它可以在一定程度上被自主控制和抑制。为了确定注视跟随认知控制的神经基础，我们进行了一项事件相关的 fMRI 实验，在该实验中，当人类受试者处于两种不同的情境中时，我们追踪了他们的眼球运动：一种是基线注视跟随情境，在这种情境中，受试者被指示利用注视线索将注意力转移到注视目标上；另一种是控制情境，在这种情境中，受试者被要求忽略注视线索，而是根据颜色映射规则将注意力转移到一个不同的空间目标上，这需要抑制注视跟随。我们可以在一个包含背外侧前额叶皮层（dlPFC）、眶额皮层（OFC）、前岛叶、楔前叶和后顶叶皮层（PPC）的额顶叶网络中识别出与抑制相关的血氧水平依赖（BOLD）反应。这些发现表明，额顶叶回路的过度兴奋反过来抑制注视跟随区可能是临床人群中注视跟随缺陷的潜在原因。
