The primate amygdala and the control of visual search of emotional stimuli

灵长类动物杏仁核和情绪刺激视觉搜索的控制

基本信息

批准号：
8117161
负责人：
Katalin M Gothard
金额：
$ 15.27万
依托单位：
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2010
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2010-07-26 至 2012-05-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8117161
关键词：
Agonist Amygdaloid structure Area Attention Autistic Disorder Basal Ganglia Behavior Behavioral Bicuculline Biological Markers Brain Brain Stem Cell Nucleus Characteristics Color Complex Diagnostic Discrimination Electrodes Electrophysiology (science)Elements Emotional Emotional disorder Emotions Environment Evaluation Eye Eye Movements Face Face Processing Facial Expression Familiarity Galvanic Skin Response Genotype Gestures Goals Human Image Individual Injection of therapeutic agent Lateral Lesion Libraries Location Magnetic Resonance Imaging Measures Mediating Mental disorders Microinjections Monitor Monkeys Mood Disorders Motion Muscimol Nose Nuclear Oral cavity Outcome Patient observation Patients Pattern Performance Phenotype Play Posture Primates Process Research Resources Role Saccades Saline Scanning Schizophrenia Signal Transduction Social Phobia Source Specificity Stimulus Structure Techniques Testing Visual Visual attention clinically relevant design effective intervention emotional stimulus extrastriate visual cortex gamma-Aminobutyric Acid indexing neural circuit nonhuman primate novel public health relevance relating to nervous system research study response sample fixation social social communication success tool visual process visual processing visual search visual stimulus

项目摘要

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Humans and monkeys use eye movements to explore their world and identify, in their visual environment, the emotionally and socially important elements. The success of non-verbal social communication with facial expressions, gestures, and postures depends critically on the fast and correct evaluation of the signals displayed by others. The sequence of saccades and fixations executed by the eyes of monkeys and humans during the visual exploration of facial expressions (scanpaths) are influenced by two processes: bottom-up visual processes which allocate visual attention to salient elements of the image (e.g., the eyes), and top-down processes that reflect goals, expertise, and momentary emotional states. The majority of psychiatric disorders are accompanied by aberrant scanpaths, yet the source of the deficit is poorly understood. The observation that patients with amygdala damage fail to explore the eyes and show scanpath abnormalities similar to patients with autism, schizophrenia, social phobia, and affective disorders, suggests that the amygdala is involved in guiding visual attention during face exploration. The precise contribution of the amygdala to this process is unknown. The amygdala is a complex of two main nuclear groups with dissociable functions and we propose that different nuclear groups are involved in the bottom-up and top-down components of scanpath elaboration. The resources afforded by this application will be used to selectively inactivate the centromedial and basolateral nuclear groups of the monkey amygdala and determine the contribution of the each nuclear group to bottom-up and top-down processes of face exploration. The results are expected to clarify the contribution of the amygdala to the acquisition of socially and emotionally relevant information-a critical prerequisite in designing a more effective intervention in socio-emotional disorders. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The goal of this application is to determine the role of the primate amygdala in allocating visual attention to visual targets of enhanced emotional and social significance. The proposal is centered on the hypothesis that the pattern of eye movements during the visual exploration of faces depends on both top-down and bottom-up processes and that these processes can be localized to different groups of amygdaloid nuclei. The centromedial group of nuclei, reciprocally connected to reflexive and autonomic centers in the brain-stem, are hypothesized for form a circuit that contributes to bottom-up control of eye movements. In contrast, the basolateral nuclear complex, functionally connected to high-level cortical visual areas, is expected to provide top-down control of eye movements. To test these hypotheses, we will use reversible inactivation to separately manipulate the two components of the amygdalar complex, and measure the alterations in visually-guided saccades and in the exploration of images of facial expressions. This project reflects a novel integrative approach using a combination of reversible inactivation with electrophysiology under electrophysiological control, which affords causal inference between neural activity and behavior, and scanpath monitoring, which reveals untrained behavioral responses to naturalistic stimuli. The outcome will dissociate the role of two amygdaloid components within the circuit that guides eye movements, clarifying two potentially clinically relevant functions of the amygdala.

描述（由申请人提供）：人类和猴子利用眼球运动来探索他们的世界，并在他们的视觉环境中识别情感和社会上重要的元素。通过面部表情、手势和姿势进行非语言社交交流的成功关键取决于对他人所表现出的信号的快速和正确的评估。在面部表情（扫描路径）的视觉探索过程中，猴子和人类的眼睛执行的扫视和注视序列受到两个过程的影响：自下而上的视觉过程，它将视觉注意力分配给图像的显着元素（例如，眼睛）。），以及反映目标、专业知识和瞬时情绪状态的自上而下的流程。大多数精神疾病都伴有扫描路径异常，但人们对缺陷的根源知之甚少。观察发现，杏仁核受损的患者无法探索眼睛，并表现出与自闭症、精神分裂症、社交恐惧症和情感障碍患者相似的扫描路径异常，这表明杏仁核在面部探索过程中参与引导视觉注意力。杏仁核对此过程的确切贡献尚不清楚。杏仁核是具有可分离功能的两个主要核团的复合体，我们建议不同的核团参与扫描路径阐述的自下而上和自上而下的组成部分。该应用程序提供的资源将用于选择性地灭活猴子杏仁核的中心内侧和基底外侧核群，并确定每个核群对面部探索的自下而上和自上而下过程的贡献。研究结果有望阐明杏仁核对获取社会和情感相关信息的贡献——这是设计更有效的社会情感障碍干预措施的关键先决条件。公共卫生相关性：本应用的目标是确定灵长类动物杏仁核在将视觉注意力分配给具有增强情感和社会意义的视觉目标方面的作用。该提案的核心假设是，在对面部进行视觉探索时，眼球运动的模式取决于自上而下和自下而上的过程，并且这些过程可以定位于不同的杏仁核组。中心内侧的核团与脑干的反射和自主中心相互连接，被假设形成一个有助于自下而上控制眼球运动的回路。相比之下，基底外侧核复合体在功能上与高级皮层视觉区域相连，预计可以提供自上而下的眼球运动控制。为了测试这些假设，我们将使用可逆失活来分别操纵杏仁核复合体的两个组成部分，并测量视觉引导眼跳和面部表情图像探索中的变化。该项目反映了一种新颖的综合方法，在电生理控制下将可逆失活与电生理学相结合，提供神经活动和行为之间的因果推断，以及扫描路径监测，揭示对自然刺激的未经训练的行为反应。结果将分离引导眼球运动的回路中两个杏仁核成分的作用，阐明杏仁核的两个潜在的临床相关功能。