BJPsych：受虐儿童前意识情感加工过程中的杏仁核活化

　　近期一项研究显示，正、负性面部表情相关的神经反射异常增强与儿时受虐待经历有关，即使对无意识刺激仍表现出反射增强，这或许是未来精神障碍发病的一个潜在的神经危险因素。此研究登载于2013年3月7日出版的《英国精神病学杂志》(The British Journal of Psychiatry)。

　　研究选取18名有受虐待经历的儿童与相匹配的23名无受虐待经历的儿童，进行隐藏性的点探测范式对照研究，观察其在愉快、中性、愤怒情绪面孔刺激下的前意识情感表现，观察到有受虐经历的儿童与无受虐经历儿童相较，右侧杏仁核的神经反射增强，杏仁核活化程度与受虐儿童发病年龄呈负相关。

与杏仁核相关的拓展阅读：

• Nat Neurosci:害怕情绪并非只产生于杏仁核

Amygdala activation in maltreated children during pre-attentive emotional processing

Background

Childhood adversity is associated with significantly increased risk of psychiatric disorder. To date, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of children have mainly focused on institutionalisation and investigated conscious processing of affect.

Aims

To investigate neural response to pre-attentively presented affect cues in a community sample of children with documented experiences of maltreatment in the home.

Method

A masked dot-probe paradigm involving pre-attentive presentation of angry, happy and neutral facial expressions was employed. Eighteen maltreated children were compared with 23 carefully matched non-maltreated peers.

Results

Increased neural response was observed in the right amygdala for pre-attentively presented angry and happy faces in maltreated v. non-maltreated children. Level of amygdala activation was negatively associated with age at onset for several abuse subtypes.

Conclusions

Maltreatment is associated with heightened neural response to positive and negative facial affect, even to stimuli outside awareness. This may represent a latent neural risk factor for future psychiatric disorder.