Decreased Amygdala Activation Research Articles

Learning from other people's fear: amygdala-based social reference learning in social anxiety disorder.

Social anxiety disorder involves fear of social objects or situations. Social referencing may play an important role in the acquisition of this fear and could be a key determinant in future biomarkers and treatment pathways. However, the neural underpinnings mediating such learning in social anxiety are unknown. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined social reference learning in social anxiety disorder. Specifically, would patients with the disorder show increased amygdala activity during social reference learning, and further, following social reference learning, show particularly increased response to objects associated with other people's negative reactions? A total of 32 unmedicated patients with social anxiety disorder and 22 age-, intelligence quotient- and gender-matched healthy individuals responded to objects that had become associated with others' fearful, angry, happy or neutral reactions. During the social reference learning phase, a significant group × social context interaction revealed that, relative to the comparison group, the social anxiety group showed a significantly greater response in the amygdala, as well as rostral, dorsomedial and lateral frontal and parietal cortices during the social, relative to non-social, referencing trials. In addition, during the object test phase, relative to the comparison group, the social anxiety group showed increased bilateral amygdala activation to objects associated with others' fearful reactions, and a trend towards decreased amygdala activation to objects associated with others' happy and neutral reactions. These results suggest perturbed observational learning in social anxiety disorder. In addition, they further implicate the amygdala and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in the disorder, and underscore their importance in future biomarker developments.

Anxiety and social deficits have distinct relationships with amygdala function in autism spectrum disorder.

Current neural models of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and anxiety disorders suggest hyperactivation of amygdala in anxiety, but hypoactivation of amygdala in ASD. The objectives of this study were to (i) test the hypothesis that amygdala activity measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) represents a hybrid signal of opposing social functions and anxiety symptoms, and (ii) determine whether longstanding findings of decreased amygdala activation in ASD apply only to those individuals with ASD and low levels of anxiety. During fMRI scanning, 81 youth with ASD and 67 non-ASD control participants completed a face recognition paradigm that elicits robust amygdala activation. Only individuals with ASD and low anxiety levels (a subsample of 28 participants) showed decreased amygdala activation relative to controls. In the ASD group, anxiety symptoms were positively correlated with amygdala activity across the full ASD group, whereas core ASD symptoms (including social deficits) were negatively correlated. Results indicate that hypoactivation of amygdala in ASD, a suggestive finding first reported nearly 20 years ago, can be masked by comorbid anxiety-thus bringing enhanced clarity to this line of work. Amygdala activity represents a hybrid signal of emotion and social processes that cannot be reduced to either alone.

Differential patterns of amygdala and ventral striatum activation predict gender-specific changes in sexual risk behavior.

Although the initiation of sexual behavior is common among adolescents and young adults, some individuals express this behavior in a manner that significantly increases their risk for negative outcomes including sexually transmitted infections. Based on accumulating evidence, we have hypothesized that increased sexual risk behavior reflects, in part, an imbalance between neural circuits mediating approach and avoidance in particular as manifest by relatively increased ventral striatum (VS) activity and relatively decreased amygdala activity. Here, we test our hypothesis using data from seventy 18- to 22-year-old university students participating in the Duke Neurogenetics Study. We found a significant three-way interaction between amygdala activation, VS activation, and gender predicting changes in the number of sexual partners over time. Although relatively increased VS activation predicted greater increases in sexual partners for both men and women, the effect in men was contingent on the presence of relatively decreased amygdala activation and the effect in women was contingent on the presence of relatively increased amygdala activation. These findings suggest unique gender differences in how complex interactions between neural circuit function contributing to approach and avoidance may be expressed as sexual risk behavior in young adults. As such, our findings have the potential to inform the development of novel, gender-specific strategies that may be more effective at curtailing sexual risk behavior.

An fMRI Pilot Study of Cognitive Reappraisal in Children: Divergent Effects on Brain and Behavior.

Although neuroimaging studies in adults demonstrate that cognitive reappraisal effectively down-regulates negative affect and results in increased prefrontal and decreased amygdala activity, very limited empirical data exist on the neural basis of cognitive reappraisal in children. This study aimed to pilot test a developmentally-appropriate guided cognitive reappraisal task in order to examine the effects of cognitive reappraisal on children's self-reports of affect and brain responses. Study 1 (N =19, 4-10 years-old) found that children successfully employed guided cognitive reappraisal to decrease subjective ratings of negative affect, supporting the effectiveness of the guided cognitive reappraisal task. Study 2 (N =15, ages 6-10 years-old) investigated the neural responses to guided cognitive reappraisal and found that the neural responses showed increased activation in the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex during the cognitive reappraisal condition compared to the no regulation condition. In addition, amygdala activity was positively correlated with ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation during cognitive reappraisal. Findings suggest that the neural networks supporting cognitive reappraisal in children involve similar brain regions but brain responses deviate from findings in adults. Our findings suggest that the neural networks supporting emotion regulation are still developing during middle childhood, and future research is necessary to delineate age-related development of the neural network involved in cognitive reappraisal.

Effects of Oxytocin on Neural Response to Facial Expressions in Patients with Schizophrenia.

Impaired facial emotion recognition is a core deficit in schizophrenia. Oxytocin has been shown to improve social perception in patients with schizophrenia; however, the effect of oxytocin on the neural activity underlying facial emotion recognition has not been investigated. This study was aimed to assess the effect of a single dose of intranasal oxytocin on brain activity in patients with schizophrenia using an implicit facial emotion-recognition paradigm. Sixteen male patients with schizophrenia and 16 age-matched healthy male control subjects participated in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial at Seoul National University Hospital. Delivery of a single dose of 40 IU intranasal oxytocin and the placebo was separated by 1 week. Drug conditions were compared by performing a region of interest (ROI) analysis of the bilateral amygdala on responses to the emotion recognition test. It was found that nasal spray decreased amygdala activity for fearful emotion and increased activity for happy faces. Further, oxytocin elicited differential effects between the patient and control groups. Intranasal oxytocin attenuated amygdala activity for emotional faces in patients with schizophrenia, whereas intranasal oxytocin significantly increased amygdala activity in healthy controls. Oxytocin-induced BOLD signal changes in amygdala in response to happy faces was related to attachment style in the control group. Our result provides new evidence of a modulatory effect of oxytocin on neural response to emotional faces for patients with schizophrenia. Future studies are needed to investigate the effectiveness of long-term treatment with intranasal oxytocin on neural activity in patients with schizophrenia.

Emotion regulation in borderline personality disorder: the role of self-criticism, shame, and self-compassion: (commentary on Emotional processing in a ten-session general psychiatric treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder: a case study).

This case study evaluates the efficacy of a 10-session manualized version of general psychiatric management (GPM) with a female patient diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD), severe depressive disorder, and schizotypal traits. The authors hypothesized that increases in adaptive emotional processing would lead to increases in therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome. Hypotheses were not supported, and in fact, ‘a general outcome deterioration tendency and an unchanged alliance level was observed’ (p. 7). The patient’s level of emotional processing remained at the stage characterized by harsh self-criticism and shame. The authors speculate that it may take more than 10 sessions for changes in emotional processing to occur and that the patient may have been in a state where she would have benefited more from containment, support, and structure. While this case did not demonstrate therapeutic efficacy of the 10-session GPM treatment or gains in emotional processing, it does represent an attempt to explore possible mechanisms of change in the treatment of borderline personality disorder. The elucidation of mechanisms of change could potentially lead to refinement and modification of currently effective treatments and improvements in therapeutic effectiveness. Difficulties in emotion regulation are characteristic of many forms of psychopathology (Gross & Munoz, 1995). As BPD is uniquely characterized by difficulties in emotional regulation, improvements in emotional regulation would appear to be a potential core mechanism in effective treatments for BPD. In support of this, Goodman et al. (2014) reported improvement in emotion regulation associated with decreased amygdala activation in BPD

Dialectical behavior therapy alters emotion regulation and amygdala activity in patients with borderline personality disorder

ObjectiveSiever and Davis' (1991) psychobiological framework of borderline personality disorder (BPD) identifies affective instability (AI) as a core dimension characterized by prolonged and intense emotional reactivity. Recently, deficient amygdala habituation, defined as a change in response to repeated relative to novel unpleasant pictures within a session, has emerged as a biological correlate of AI in BPD. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), an evidence-based treatment, targets AI by teaching emotion-regulation skills. This study tested the hypothesis that BPD patients would exhibit decreased amygdala activation and improved habituation, as well as improved emotion regulation with standard 12-month DBT. MethodsEvent-related fMRI was obtained pre- and post-12-months of standard-DBT in unmedicated BPD patients. Healthy controls (HCs) were studied as a benchmark for normal amygdala activity and change over time (n = 11 per diagnostic-group). During each scan, participants viewed an intermixed series of unpleasant, neutral and pleasant pictures presented twice (novel, repeat). Change in emotion regulation was measured with the Difficulty in Emotion Regulation (DERS) scale. ResultsfMRI results showed the predicted Group × Time interaction: compared with HCs, BPD patients exhibited decreased amygdala activation with treatment. This post-treatment amygdala reduction in BPD was observed for all three pictures types, but particularly marked in the left hemisphere and during repeated-emotional pictures. Emotion regulation measured with the DERS significantly improved with DBT in BPD patients. Improved amygdala habituation to repeated-unpleasant pictures in patients was associated with improved overall emotional regulation measured by the DERS (total score and emotion regulation strategy use subscale). ConclusionThese findings have promising treatment implications and support the notion that DBT targets amygdala hyperactivity—part of the disturbed neural circuitry underlying emotional dysregulation in BPD. Future work includes examining how DBT-induced amygdala changes interact with frontal-lobe regions implicated in emotion regulation.

Functional Magnetic resonance Imaging Clinical Trial of a Dual-Processing Treatment Protocol for Substance-Dependent Adults

Objectives: Empirical evidence suggests substance dependence creates stress system dysregulation which, in turn, may limit the efficacy of verbal-based treatment interventions, as the recovering brain may not be functionally capable of executive level processing. Treatment models that target implicit functioning are necessary. Methods: An RCT was conducted to examine the effects of a dual-processing (DP) intervention compared to a didactic standard care (RP) model on brain function change in substance-dependent adults (N=29). Results: fMRI analyses showed decreased amygdala activation simultaneous with increased frontal lobe (medial frontal gyrus and ACC) activation in the DP group during passive watch condition, while the RP group showed continued amygdala activation simultaneous to frontal lobe activation during drug stressor presentation at post-treatment. Conclusions: Our study offers preliminary evidence that DP acts on neural functioning in ways that increase regulatory response in the presence of drug stressor cues by enhancing top-down functioning and diminishing amygdala reactivity.

Age-related changes in the structure and function of prefrontal cortex–amygdala circuitry in children and adolescents: A multi-modal imaging approach

The uncinate fasciculus is a major white matter tract that provides a crucial link between areas of the human brain that underlie emotion processing and regulation. Specifically, the uncinate fasciculus is the major direct fiber tract that connects the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The aim of the present study was to use a multi-modal imaging approach in order to simultaneously examine the relation between structural connectivity of the uncinate fasciculus and functional activation of the amygdala in a youth sample (children and adolescents). Participants were 9 to 19years old and underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Results indicate that greater structural connectivity of the uncinate fasciculus predicts reduced amygdala activation to sad and happy faces. This effect is moderated by age, with younger participants exhibiting a stronger relation. Further, decreased amygdala activation to sad faces predicts lower internalizing symptoms. These results provide important insights into brain structure–function relationships during adolescence, and suggest that greater structural connectivity of the uncinate fasciculus may facilitate regulation of the amygdala, particularly during early adolescence. These findings also have implications for understanding the relation between brain structure, function, and the development of emotion regulation difficulties, such as internalizing symptoms.

The interplay of attention and emotion: top-down attention modulates amygdala activation in psychopathy.

Psychopathic behavior has long been attributed to a fundamental deficit in fear that arises from impaired amygdala function. Growing evidence has demonstrated that fear-potentiated startle (FPS) and other psychopathy-related deficits are moderated by focus of attention, but to date, no work on adult psychopathy has examined attentional modulation of the amygdala or concomitant recruitment of relevant attention-related circuitry. Consistent with previous FPS findings, here we report that psychopathy-related differences in amygdala activation appear and disappear as a function of goal-directed attention. Specifically, decreased amygdala activity was observed in psychopathic offenders only when attention was engaged in an alternative goal-relevant task prior to presenting threat-relevant information. Under this condition, psychopaths also exhibited greater activation in selective-attention regions of the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) than did nonpsychopaths, and this increased LPFC activation mediated psychopathy's association with decreased amygdala activation. In contrast, when explicitly attending to threat, amygdala activation did not differ in psychopaths and nonpsychopaths. This pattern of amygdala activation highlights the potential role of LPFC in mediating the failure of psychopathic individuals to process fear and other important information when it is peripheral to the primary focus of goal-directed attention.

Effect of d-amphetamine on emotion-potentiated startle in healthy humans: implications for psychopathy and antisocial behaviour

An emerging literature associates increased dopaminergic neurotransmission with altered brain response to aversive stimuli in humans. The direction of the effect of dopamine on aversive motivation, however, remains unclear, with some studies reporting increased and others decreased amygdala activation to aversive stimuli following the administration of dopamine agonists. Potentiation of the startle response by aversive foreground stimuli provides an objective and directional measure of emotional reactivity and is considered useful as an index of the emotional effects of different drugs. We investigated the effects of two doses of D-amphetamine (5 and 10 mg), compared to placebo, for the first time to our knowledge, using the affect-startle paradigm. The study employed a between-subjects, double-blind design, with three conditions: 0 mg (placebo), and 5 and 10 mg D-amphetamine (initially n = 20/group; final sample: n = 18, placebo; n = 18, 5 mg; n = 16, 10 mg). After drug/placebo administration, startle responses (eyeblinks) to intermittent noise probes were measured during viewing of pleasant, neutral and unpleasant images. Participants' general and specific impulsivity and fear-related personality traits were also assessed. The three groups were comparable on personality traits. Only the placebo group showed significant startle potentiation by unpleasant, relative to neutral, images; this effect was absent in both 5- and 10-mg D-amphetamine groups (i.e. the same effect of D-amphetamine observed at different doses in different people). Our findings demonstrate a reduced aversive emotional response under D-amphetamine and may help to account for the known link between the use of psychostimulant drugs and antisocial behaviour.

Overlapping neural substrates between intentional and incidental down-regulation of negative emotions.

Emotion regulation can be achieved in various ways, but few studies have evaluated the extent to which the neurocognitive substrates of these distinct operations overlap. In the study reported here, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure activity in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex of 10 participants who completed two independent tasks of emotion regulation-reappraisal, measuring intentional emotion regulation, and affect labeling, measuring incidental emotion regulation-with the objective of identifying potential overlap in the neural substrates underlying each task. Analyses focused on a priori regions of interest in the amygdala and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). For both tasks, fMRI showed decreased amygdala activation during emotion regulation compared with emotion conditions. During reappraisal, this decrease in amygdala activation was accompanied by a proportional decrease in emotional intensity ratings; during affect labeling, the decrease in amygdala activation correlated with self-reported aggression. Importantly, across participants, the magnitude of decrease in amygdala activation during reappraisal correlated with the magnitude of decrease during affect labeling, even though the tasks were administered on separate days, and values indexing amygdala activation during each task were extracted independently of one another. In addition, IFG-amygdala connectivity, assessed via psychophysiological interaction analysis, overlapped between tasks in two regions within the right IFG. The results suggest that the two tasks recruit overlapping regions of prefrontal cortex, resulting in similar reductions in amygdala activation, regardless of the strategy employed. Intentional and incidental forms of emotion regulation, despite their phenomenological differences, may therefore converge on a common neurocognitive pathway.

Police officers under attack: Resilience implications of an fMRI study

ObjectiveCrime is now a top-priority public-health issue in many urban areas. Sao Paulo’s state police force was the target of gunfire attack on an unprecedented scale. Several officers were killed or wounded, and many more were affected by psychological trauma. We investigated the brain activity underlying trauma, the coping effect of psychotherapy, and resilience in a highly homogenous sample that experienced the same traumatic event. The design applied was a between-group comparison of cerebral blood-oxygenation-level-dependent signals and symptom scores of police officers with and without partial Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (pPTSD). MethodWe used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the retrieval of traumatic memories of 36 volunteers divided in three groups: (1) pPTSD policemen submitted to psychotherapy; (2) pPTSD policemen on the wait list; and (3) symptom-free (resilient) policemen. All participants were given a baseline fMRI scan and a follow-up scan some 40 days later. Not given psychotherapy, groups 2 and 3 were controls. ResultsGroup 1 showed 37% fewer PTSD symptoms post-psychotherapy and their scores and neural expressions were comparable to Group 3 resilient policemen. A marked increased in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity was concomitant with decreased amygdala activity during traumatic memory retrieval in both resilient and pPTSD participants (after psychotherapy) and these findings were associated with symptom attenuation. ConclusionsOur results provide neurophysiological evidence of resilience in a high-risk group for PTSD. Psychotherapy may help to build narratives and resilient integrated translations of fragmented traumatic memories via mPFC, and thus weaken their sensory content while strengthening them cognitively.

Neural Correlates of Affect Processing and Aggression in Methamphetamine Dependence

Methamphetamine abuse is associated with high rates of aggression but few studies have addressed the contributing neurobiological factors. To quantify aggression, investigate function in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, and assess relationships between brain function and behavior in methamphetamine-dependent individuals. In a case-control study, aggression and brain activation were compared between methamphetamine-dependent and control participants. Participants were recruited from the general community to an academic research center. Thirty-nine methamphetamine-dependent volunteers (16 women) who were abstinent for 7 to 10 days and 37 drug-free control volunteers (18 women) participated in the study; subsets completed self-report and behavioral measures. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed on 25 methamphetamine-dependent and 23 control participants. We measured self-reported and perpetrated aggression and self-reported alexithymia. Brain activation was assessed using fMRI during visual processing of facial affect (affect matching) and symbolic processing (affect labeling), the latter representing an incidental form of emotion regulation. Methamphetamine-dependent participants self-reported more aggression and alexithymia than control participants and escalated perpetrated aggression more following provocation. Alexithymia scores correlated with measures of aggression. During affect matching, fMRI showed no differences between groups in amygdala activation but found lower activation in methamphetamine-dependent than control participants in the bilateral ventral inferior frontal gyrus. During affect labeling, participants recruited the dorsal inferior frontal gyrus and exhibited decreased amygdala activity, consistent with successful emotion regulation; there was no group difference in this effect. The magnitude of decrease in amygdala activity during affect labeling correlated inversely with self-reported aggression in control participants and perpetrated aggression in all participants. Ventral inferior frontal gyrus activation correlated inversely with alexithymia in control participants. Contrary to the hypotheses, methamphetamine-dependent individuals may successfully regulate emotions through incidental means (affect labeling). Instead, low ventral inferior frontal gyrus activity may contribute to heightened aggression by limiting emotional insight.

Developing connections for affective regulation: Age-related changes in emotional brain connectivity

The regulation of affective arousal is a critical aspect of children’s social and cognitive development. However, few studies have examined the brain mechanisms involved in the development of this aspect of “hot” executive functioning. This process has been conceptualized as involving prefrontal control of the amygdala. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the brain mechanisms involved in the development of affective regulation in typically developing 5- to 11-year-olds and an adult comparison sample. Children and adults displayed differing patterns of increased anterior cingulate cortex and decreased amygdala activation during episodes in which emotion regulation was required. Specifically, amygdala activation increased in adults but decreased in children during recovery from a frustrating episode. In addition, we used effective connectivity analyses to investigate differential correlations between key emotional brain areas in response to the regulatory task demands. We found reliable increases in effective connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala during periods of increased demand for emotion regulation. This effective connectivity increased with age.

The Brain Functional Networks Associated to Human and Animal Suffering Differ among Omnivores, Vegetarians and Vegans

Empathy and affective appraisals for conspecifics are among the hallmarks of social interaction. Using functional MRI, we hypothesized that vegetarians and vegans, who made their feeding choice for ethical reasons, might show brain responses to conditions of suffering involving humans or animals different from omnivores. We recruited 20 omnivore subjects, 19 vegetarians, and 21 vegans. The groups were matched for sex and age. Brain activation was investigated using fMRI and an event-related design during observation of negative affective pictures of human beings and animals (showing mutilations, murdered people, human/animal threat, tortures, wounds, etc.). Participants saw negative-valence scenes related to humans and animals, alternating with natural landscapes. During human negative valence scenes, compared with omnivores, vegetarians and vegans had an increased recruitment of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). More critically, during animal negative valence scenes, they had decreased amygdala activation and increased activation of the lingual gyri, the left cuneus, the posterior cingulate cortex and several areas mainly located in the frontal lobes, including the ACC, the IFG and the middle frontal gyrus. Nonetheless, also substantial differences between vegetarians and vegans have been found responding to negative scenes. Vegetarians showed a selective recruitment of the right inferior parietal lobule during human negative scenes, and a prevailing activation of the ACC during animal negative scenes. Conversely, during animal negative scenes an increased activation of the inferior prefrontal cortex was observed in vegans. These results suggest that empathy toward non conspecifics has different neural representation among individuals with different feeding habits, perhaps reflecting different motivational factors and beliefs.

Individual differences in dispositional mindfulness and brain activity involved in reappraisal of emotion

The regulation of negative emotion through reappraisal has been shown to induce increased prefrontal activity and decreased amygdala activity. Individual differences in dispositional mindfulness reflect differences in typical recognition, detachment and regulation of current experience, thought to also operate as top-down control mechanism. We sought to investigate whether such individual differences would be associated with brain activity elicited during reappraisal of negative emotion. Eighteen healthy participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging task that involved attending to or reappraising negative stimuli, and provided emotion experience ratings after each trial. Dispositional mindfulness was assessed with a self-report questionnaire. Reappraisal induced activity in a brain network involving predominantly dorsal portions of the prefrontal cortex, replicating previous studies. A voxelwise regression analysis showed that individual differences in the tendency to be mindful predicted activity in neural regions underlying reappraisal, with dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activation increasing with more mindfulness traits. Notably, this prefrontal activation was inversely correlated with the amygdala response to negative scenes, further supporting its role in down-regulating emotion-generation regions. These findings suggest that individual differences in dispositional mindfulness, which reflect the tendency to recognize and regulate current states, may modulate activity in neural systems involved in the effective cognitive control of negative emotion.

Dopaminergic Modulation of Amygdala Activity During Emotion Recognition in Patients With Parkinson Disease

Variable findings have been reported for emotional processing in patients with Parkinson disease (PD). These contradictions could be due to differences in the progression of dopamine (DA) depletion. Levodopa treatment could have either beneficial or detrimental effects on brain functions modulated by DA according to disease progression. In healthy subjects, levodopa administration leads to a decreased amygdala activation in response to emotional tasks. Because it is known that there is a link between DA loss in mesolimbic system and depression, we hypothesized that PD patients without depression would have spared limbic DA projections. Consequently, levodopa medication could overdose limbic regions relative to severe dorsal striatal denervation. To evaluate the effect of levodopa on amygdala activation, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in nondemented, nondepressed PD patients compared with healthy volunteers. Patients with PD and healthy subjects received either levodopa or placebo in 2 functional magnetic resonance imaging sessions. Amygdala activation was evaluated during a facial emotion recognition task. A similar right-amygdala activity was seen in both healthy subjects and PD patients in the placebo session. After levodopa administration, activity was reduced in both groups. In the patients, the levodopa dose used significantly improved motor dysfunction. Nondemented, nondepressed PD patients thus seem to have relatively preserved DA mesolimbic projections, and consequently, the same dose of levodopa needed to correct the lack of DA in the severely depleted putamen (motor part of striatum) would incidentally overdose the mesolimbic projections toward the amygdala.

Distinct control networks for cognition and emotion in the prefrontal cortex

The activation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) has been suggested to reflect the engagement of a control mechanism for top-down biasing of context processing in resource-demanding memory tasks. Here we tested the hypothesis that the dlPFC subserves a similar function also in attention and emotion tasks. 18 healthy young adults were tested in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study where the demands for context processing were manipulated in three different cognitive domains: auditory attention, episodic retrieval, and emotion regulation. We found that the right dlPFC was jointly sensitive to increased cognitive demands in the attention and memory tasks. By contrast, increased demands in the emotion task (reappraisal) were associated with increased activity in ventromedial PFC along with decreased amygdala activity. Our findings of divergent prefrontal control networks for cognitive and emotional control extend previous separations of cognition and emotion in the anterior cingulate cortex.

Emotional face processing in schizophrenia

Recent studies of face processing deficits in people with schizophrenia have begun to shed light on the answers to four important questions: What is the major component of the deficit? Does it have a neurobiological basis? When does it appear in development? Can it be remediated? Eye contact is especially important for recognizing fearful expressions. Patients with schizophrenia avoid gazing at important facial feature regions (especially eyes) and are particularly impaired in recognizing fear. Patients were thought to exhibit decreased amygdala activity when viewing fearful faces; however, more recent studies have revealed limbic hyperactivity in patients when viewing nonfearful and fearful faces compared with baseline. Amygdala hyperactivity can also be detected when people with schizophrenia fail to appropriately recognize fear faces. Studies indicate that there are developmental changes in amygdala activation, including limbic hyperactivity to fear faces during adolescence, a critical time for the onset of schizophrenia. New treatment strategies can increase gaze to the eye region, which could improve emotional recognition in patients. These findings suggest that there may soon be more options for overcoming specific problems in emotional face evaluation in people who have schizophrenia.