Excessively increased or decreased fear is strongly associated with a number of brain disorders, including social and animal phobias, posttraumatic stress disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and William's syndrome. The amygdala is confirmed to play an important role in emotional processing, particularly for negative/threatening stimuli. Recent studies have also shown that the amygdala is responsive to social stimuli, including neutral faces and visual social information. However, the stimuli used in most of these studies contain human or human-related information, which indicates that the amygdala is sensitive to animate, conspecific information. Little is known about whether the amygdala plays a more general role in processing any animate entities, and further, what the common role of the amygdala is in different varieties of brain disorders. Our long-term goal is to determine neural mechanisms of fear to different categories of stimuli. The objective of this proposal is to determine how the amygdala participates in processing different categories of threatening stimuli;i.e., threatening animals and manipulable objects. The central hypothesis for the proposed research is that the amygdala activity is highly associated with detecting animate entities (i.e., living things that move on their own). Our rationale for the proposed research is that determination of the relationship between stimulus category and amygdala activation would shed light on neural mechanisms of fear and emotional-related brain disorders. We plan to test our central hypothesis and accomplish the overall objective of this application by pursuing three specific aims, to determine the effects of (1) modality;(2) animate and social context;and (3) conscious awareness on amygdala activation for threatening animals and objects. A series of studies will be conducted, mainly using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique, with native Chinese speakers as subjects. In order to equate affective levels across categories, valence and arousal levels will be rated and matched before fMRI scanning in separate groups of subjects. This proposed research is significant, because it will not only elucidate the category representation in the amygdala, but also help us understand the nature of emotional-related brain disorders, and contribute to an improvement on rehabilitative efforts for patients with such disorders.

Public Health Relevance

The proposed research is highly relevant to public health. It will help us understand the nature of emotional-related brain disorders, and contribute to an improvement in rehabilitative efforts for patients with such disorders. There is also a significant positive impact in understanding how the amygdala is prepared in an evolutionary manner when people are afraid of different categories of threatening stimuli.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Fogarty International Center (FIC)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01TW007897-05
Application #
8274295
Study Section
International and Cooperative Projects - 1 Study Section (ICP1)
Program Officer
Liu, Xingzhu
Project Start
2008-07-01
Project End
2013-06-30
Budget Start
2012-07-01
Budget End
2013-06-30
Support Year
5
Fiscal Year
2012
Total Cost
$50,066
Indirect Cost
$3,536
Name
Peking University
Department
Type
DUNS #
653934935
City
Beijing
State
Country
China
Zip Code
10087-1
Wang, Yang; Yang, Jiongjiong (2017) Effects of Arousal and Context on Recognition Memory for Emotional Pictures in Younger and Older Adults. Exp Aging Res 43:124-148
Feng, Xue; Gu, Ruolei; Liang, Fucheng et al. (2015) Depressive states amplify both upward and downward counterfactual thinking. Int J Psychophysiol 97:93-8
Fan, Cong; He, Weiqi; He, Huamin et al. (2015) N170 Changes Show Identifiable Chinese Characters Compete Primarily with Faces Rather than Houses. Front Psychol 6:1952
Cao, Zhijun; Zhao, Yanbing; Tan, Tengteng et al. (2014) Distinct brain activity in processing negative pictures of animals and objects - the role of human contexts. Neuroimage 84:901-10
Feng, Chunliang; Luo, Yi; Gu, Ruolei et al. (2013) The flexible fairness: equality, earned entitlement, and self-interest. PLoS One 8:e73106
Wu, Haiyan; Yang, Suyong; Sun, Shiyue et al. (2013) The male advantage in child facial resemblance detection: behavioral and ERP evidence. Soc Neurosci 8:555-67
Feng, Chunliang; Luo, Yuejia; Fu, Shimin (2013) The category-sensitive and orientation-sensitive N170 adaptation in faces revealed by comparison with Chinese characters. Psychophysiology 50:885-99
Luo, Wenbo; He, Weiqi; Yang, Suyong et al. (2013) Electrophysiological evidence of facial inversion with rapid serial visual presentation. Biol Psychol 92:395-402
Wu, Tingting; Luo, Yi; Broster, Lucas S et al. (2013) The impact of anxiety on social decision-making: behavioral and electrodermal findings. Soc Neurosci 8:11-21
Yang, Qiwei; Gu, Ruolei; Tang, Ping et al. (2013) How does cognitive reappraisal affect the response to gains and losses? Psychophysiology 50:1094-103

Showing the most recent 10 out of 43 publications