| |
Abstract:
Ten healthy men were studied in a selective attention
paradigm during viewing of emotional pictures from the
International Affective Picture System. Pictures were presented for
500 msec every 3.0 seconds. Each set contained pleasant, unpleasant
and neutral pictures. Twelve measures of cerebral blood flow using
positron emission tomography and 15O-water were obtained in each
subject, one for each picture set. During half the scans subjects
attended to their emotional experience (indicating whether the
picture evoked a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feeling). During
the other half they attended to the spatial location of the scene
(indicating whether the scene depicted was indoors, outdoors or
indeterminate.
During attention to subjective emotional responses increased
neural activity was elicited in rostral anterior cingulate cortex
(BA32) and medial prefrontal cortex (Z=6.74, p<.001, corrected),
right temporal pole, insula and ventral cingulate (all p<.001,
corrected). Under the same stimulus conditions when subjects
attended to spatial aspects of the picture sets activation was
observed in parieto-occipital cortex bilaterally (Z=5.71,
p<.001, corrected). The findings indicate a specific role for
the anterior cingulate cortex and related paralimbic structures in
representing subjective emotional responses.
|
