Broks P, Young A W, Maratos E J, Coffey P J, Calder A J, Isaac C L, Mayes A R, Hodges J R, Montaldi D, Cezayirli E, Roberts N, Hadley D
Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, UK.
Neuropsychologia. 1998 Jan;36(1):59-70. doi: 10.1016/s0028-3932(97)00105-x.
Face processing and facial emotion recognition were investigated in five post-encephalitic people of average or above-average intelligence. Four of these people (JC, YW, RB and SE) had extensive damage in the region of the amygdala. A fifth post-encephalitic person with predominantly hippocampal damage and relative sparing of the amygdala (RS) participated, allowing us to contrast the effects of temporal lobe damage including and excluding the amygdala region. The findings showed impaired recognition of fear following bilateral temporal lobe damage when this included the amygdala. For JC, this was part of a constellation of deficits on face processing tasks, with impaired recognition of several emotions. SE, YW and RB, however, showed relatively circumscribed deficits. Although they all had some problems in recognizing or naming famous faces, and had poor memory for faces on the Warrington Recognition Memory Test, none showed a significant impairment on the Benton Test of Facial Recognition, indicating relatively good perception of the face's physical structure. In a test of recognition of basic emotions (happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust and anger), SE, YW and RB achieved normal levels of performance in comparison to our control group for all emotions except fear. Their results contrast with those of RS, with relative sparing of the amygdala region and unimpaired recognition of emotion, pointing clearly toward the importance of the amygdala in the recognition of fear.
我们对五名智力中等或高于中等水平的脑炎后患者进行了面部处理和面部情绪识别研究。其中四人（JC、YW、RB和SE）杏仁核区域有广泛损伤。第五名主要是海马体损伤且杏仁核相对未受影响的脑炎后患者（RS）也参与了研究，这使我们能够对比包括和不包括杏仁核区域的颞叶损伤的影响。研究结果表明，双侧颞叶损伤且包括杏仁核时，恐惧识别能力受损。对JC来说，这是面部处理任务一系列缺陷的一部分，几种情绪的识别都受到了损害。然而，SE、YW和RB表现出相对局限的缺陷。尽管他们在识别或说出名人面孔时都有一些问题，并且在沃林顿识别记忆测试中对面孔的记忆较差，但在本顿面部识别测试中均未表现出明显受损，表明对面部物理结构的感知相对良好。在一项基本情绪（快乐、惊讶、恐惧、悲伤、厌恶和愤怒）识别测试中，与我们的对照组相比，SE、YW和RB除恐惧外的所有情绪识别表现均达到正常水平。他们的结果与RS的结果形成对比，RS的杏仁核区域相对未受影响且情绪识别未受损，这清楚地表明了杏仁核在恐惧识别中的重要性。
