Levels of appraisal: A medial prefrontal role in high-level appraisal of emotional material

作     者：Kalisch, Raffael Wiech, Katja Critchley, Hugo D. Dolan, Raymond J. 

作者机构：UCL Inst Neurol Funct Imaging Lab Wellcome Dept Imaging Neurosci London WC1N 3BG England 

出 版 物：《NEUROIMAGE》 (神经图像)

年 卷 期：2006年第30卷第4期

页      面：1458-1466页

核心收录：

学科分类：1002[医学-临床医学] 1001[医学-基础医学(可授医学、理学学位)] 1010[医学-医学技术（可授医学、理学学位）] 1009[医学-特种医学] 10[医学] 

基　　金：Wellcome Trust Funding Source: Medline 

主　　题：Adolescent Adult Anxiety/physiopathology Arousal/physiology Attention/physiology Brain Mapping Brain Mapping Cerebral Cortex/physiopathology Emotions/physiology Female Functional Laterality/physiology Gyrus Cinguli/physiopathology Humans Image Processing, Computer-Assisted Imaging, Three-Dimensional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Male Memory, Short-Term/physiology Middle Aged Nerve Net/physiopathology Pain/physiopathology Prefrontal Cortex/physiology Prefrontal Cortex/physiopathology Psychomotor Performance/physiology Serial Learning/physiology 

摘      要：Appraisal refers to the evaluation of the meaning of emotional stimuli and is considered causal in the generation of an emotional response. Cognitive neuroscience has paid little attention to a theoretical distinction between low-level appraisal, considered to be automatic and preattentive, and high-level appraisal that requires attentional and working memory resources. To disentangle low-level from high-level appraisal, we varied cognitive load in a concurrent, unrelated working memory task, while anxiety was induced through anticipation of impending pain. Confirming theoretical predictions, we show that anxiety-related activity in dorsal medial prefrontal/rostral anterior cingulate cortex (dorsal MPFC/ACC) is attenuated under high, relative to low, cognitive load. Lateral prefrontal regions previously implicated in reappraisal and cognitive emotion regulation show a similar interaction between anxiety and cognitive load. Critically, there were no changes in physiological and subjective measures of low-level appraisal outcome and emotional response generation as a function of load, allowing us to conclude that MPFC/ACC and lateral PFC activity during anticipatory anxiety reflects high-level appraisal. Our data provide neurobiological evidence for a distinction between low-level and high-level appraisal mechanisms. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.