This R01 application proposes functional neuroimaging studies with human subjects to elucidate the role of the prefrontal cortex and amygdala in the processing of facial identities and expressions that predict different social outcomes. Presentations of facial expressions of emotion in neuroimaging studies have proven particularly robust stimuli for activating amygdala and prefrontal regions involved in processing biologically- relevant social cues. Further, these tasks have proven useful for revealing aberrant brain activation patterns in patients with various emotional disorders (e.g., anxiety, depression). Here we propose to further develop our facial expression tasks to increase our understanding of cortical-subcortical interactions during the processing of these socially relevant cues. The utility of this work is that it will provide for a better understanding of the basic rules that determine amygdala responses, and allow us to better understand how the amygdala interacts with reciprocally connected prefrontal areas when such expressions are encountered. The proposed studies comprise programmatic extensions of our previous work as well as incorporate a novel longitudinal study of the effect of regulatory experience on brain structure. This specific study builds off our recent exciting published finding showing that the structural integrity of an amygdala-prefrontal pathway predicts individual differences in reported anxiety. The experiments proposed here are critical for establishing an understanding of the normal pattern of adult human brain responsivity to these ubiquitous social cues. These data will be usefully compared to complementary developmental research (i.e., with children and adolescents) and will be amenable to direct translation to clinical populations.

Public Health Relevance

Facial expressions are everywhere. Indeed, we use the expressions of others on a moment-to-moment basis to predict what will happen next in our social world. The experiments proposed here will increase our understanding of the brain mechanisms involved in this learning. With this information, we can then better understand what goes wrong in the brains of individuals with major depression and anxiety disorders.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01MH080716-08
Application #
8800395
Study Section
Social Psychology, Personality and Interpersonal Processes Study Section (SPIP)
Program Officer
Simmons, Janine M
Project Start
2007-02-01
Project End
2017-01-31
Budget Start
2015-03-01
Budget End
2016-01-31
Support Year
8
Fiscal Year
2015
Total Cost
$402,500
Indirect Cost
$152,500
Name
Dartmouth College
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
041027822
City
Hanover
State
NH
Country
United States
Zip Code
03755
Kim, M Justin; Shin, Jin; Taylor, James M et al. (2017) Intolerance of uncertainty predicts increased striatal volume. Emotion 17:895-899
Kim, M Justin; Mattek, Alison M; Bennett, Randi H et al. (2017) Human Amygdala Tracks a Feature-Based Valence Signal Embedded within the Facial Expression of Surprise. J Neurosci 37:9510-9518
Kim, M Justin; Mattek, Alison M; Burr, Daisy A et al. (2017) Preliminary report on the association between pulvinar volume and the ability to detect backward-masked facial features. Neuropsychologia :
Mattek, Alison M; Wolford, George L; Whalen, Paul J (2017) A Mathematical Model Captures the Structure of Subjective Affect. Perspect Psychol Sci 12:508-526
Mattek, Alison M; Whalen, Paul J; Berkowitz, Julia L et al. (2016) Differential effects of cognitive load on subjective versus motor responses to ambiguously valenced facial expressions. Emotion 16:929-36
Wen, Qiuting; Stirling, Brian D; Sha, Long et al. (2016) Parcellation of Human Amygdala Subfields Using Orientation Distribution Function and Spectral K-means Clustering. Comput Diffus MRI (2016) 2016:123-132
Davis, F Caroline; Neta, Maital; Kim, M Justin et al. (2016) Interpreting ambiguous social cues in unpredictable contexts. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 11:775-82
Kim, M Justin; Brown, Annemarie C; Mattek, Alison M et al. (2016) The Inverse Relationship between the Microstructural Variability of Amygdala-Prefrontal Pathways and Trait Anxiety Is Moderated by Sex. Front Syst Neurosci 10:93
Kim, M Justin; Solomon, Kimberly M; Neta, Maital et al. (2016) A face versus non-face context influences amygdala responses to masked fearful eye whites. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 11:1933-1941
Taylor, James M; Whalen, Paul J (2015) Neuroimaging and Anxiety: the Neural Substrates of Pathological and Non-pathological Anxiety. Curr Psychiatry Rep 17:49

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