Abstract
Background. Brain regions subserving emotion have mostly been studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during emotion provocation procedures in healthy participants. Objective. To identify neuroanatomical regions associated with spontaneous changes in emotional state over time. Methods. Self-rated emotional valence and arousal scores, and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) measured by perfusion MRI, were measured 4 or 8 times spanning at least 2 weeks in each of 21 subjects with Parkinson's disease (PD). A random-effects SPM analysis, corrected for multiple comparisons, identified significant clusters of contiguous voxels in which rCBF varied with valence or arousal. Results. Emotional valence correlated positively with rCBF in several brain regions, including medial globus pallidus, orbital prefrontal cortex (PFC), and white matter near putamen, thalamus, insula, and medial PFC. Valence correlated negatively with rCBF in striatum, subgenual cingulate cortex, ventrolateral PFC, and precuneus—posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Arousal correlated positively with rCBF in clusters including claustrum-thalamus-ventral striatum and inferior parietal lobule and correlated negatively in clusters including posterior insula—mediodorsal thalamus and midbrain. Conclusion. This study demonstrates that the temporal stability of perfusion MRI allows within-subject investigations of spontaneous fluctuations in mental state, such as mood, over relatively long-time intervals.
Highlights
Brain regions subserving emotion have mostly been studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging during emotion provocation procedures in healthy participants
The mean value for each Visual Analog Scale (VAS) item and for the emotional valence and arousal scores are given in Table 1 and depicted on a diagram of the circumplex model of emotion (Figure 1)
Our study revealed a number of neural substrates associated with naturalistic emotional state; that is, (a) medial frontal prefrontal cortex (PFC)/ACC—subcortical circuit—medial PFC/ACC, basal ganglia, and thalamus; (b) limbic and paralimbic— amygdala, hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus, thalamus, mamillary body, and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), insula, parietal, and lateral PFC; (c) visual system—occipital and temporal cortex
Summary
Brain regions subserving emotion have mostly been studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during emotion provocation procedures in healthy participants. Self-rated emotional valence and arousal scores, and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) measured by perfusion MRI, were measured 4 or 8 times spanning at least 2 weeks in each of 21 subjects with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Emotional valence correlated positively with rCBF in several brain regions, including medial globus pallidus, orbital prefrontal cortex (PFC), and white matter near putamen, thalamus, insula, and medial PFC. Neuroimaging studies have shown that a decrease in dopamine transporter availability in left putamen was associated with a reduction of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activity during emotional gesture recognition tasks [9]. Lack of amygdala activation was observed by visual event-related potentials (ERPs) during facial expression recognition [4] Based on these data, emotional processing in PD may differ from that of healthy controls
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