Adolphs R, Damasio H, Tranel D, Damasio A R
Department of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City 52242, USA.
J Neurosci. 1996 Dec 1;16(23):7678-87. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.16-23-07678.1996.
This study is part of an effort to map neural systems involved in the processing of emotion, and it focuses on the possible cortical components of the process of recognizing facial expressions. We hypothesized that the cortical systems most responsible for the recognition of emotional facial expressions would draw on discrete regions of right higher-order sensory cortices and that the recognition of specific emotions would depend on partially distinct system subsets of such cortical regions. We tested these hypotheses using lesion analysis in 37 subjects with focal brain damage. Subjects were asked to recognize facial expressions of six basic emotions: happiness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. Data were analyzed with a novel technique, based on three-dimensional reconstruction of brain images, in which anatomical description of surface lesions and task performance scores were jointly mapped onto a standard brain-space. We found that all subjects recognized happy expressions normally but that some subjects were impaired in recognizing negative emotions, especially fear and sadness. The cortical surface regions that best correlated with impaired recognition of emotion were in the right inferior parietal cortex and in the right mesial anterior infracalcarine cortex. We did not find impairments in recognizing any emotion in subjects with lesions restricted to the left hemisphere. These data provide evidence for a neural system important to processing facial expressions of some emotions, involving discrete visual and somatosensory cortical sectors in right hemisphere.
本研究是绘制参与情绪处理的神经系统这一工作的一部分，它聚焦于识别面部表情过程中可能涉及的皮层组成部分。我们假设，对情绪性面部表情识别最为关键的皮层系统会利用右侧高阶感觉皮层的离散区域，并且特定情绪的识别将依赖于这些皮层区域中部分不同的系统子集。我们对37名患有局灶性脑损伤的受试者进行了损伤分析，以检验这些假设。受试者被要求识别六种基本情绪的面部表情：快乐、惊讶、恐惧、愤怒、厌恶和悲伤。我们使用了一种基于脑图像三维重建的新技术来分析数据，在该技术中，表面损伤的解剖学描述和任务表现得分被共同映射到一个标准脑空间上。我们发现，所有受试者都能正常识别快乐表情，但一些受试者在识别负面情绪，尤其是恐惧和悲伤方面存在障碍。与情绪识别受损相关性最强的皮层表面区域位于右侧顶下叶皮层和右侧内侧前距状裂皮层。我们没有在仅左半球有损伤的受试者中发现任何情绪识别障碍。这些数据为一个对处理某些情绪的面部表情很重要的神经系统提供了证据，该系统涉及右半球离散的视觉和躯体感觉皮层区域。
