This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques has revolutionized the study of human cognition by spatially and temporally isolating brain activity related to specific processes, such as emotional processing and its regulation. Research with fMRI has already identified several brain regions involved in the processing of emotions, including the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The ACC and other frontal areas modulate the activation of the amygdala, and functional deficits of the frontal cortex have been related to abnormal emotion control. However the dynamics of emotional processing and regulation have not been examined in a manner that is fully specified in cognitive processing terms. For example, the reappraisal task, which requires subjects to voluntarily attenuate or enhance the intensity of responses to negative photos using cognitive reframing strategies, is highly susceptible to subjective differences in the interpretation of instructions and the cognitive strategies employed. In addition, the time required for the control process in this task has to be relatively long. These limitations have particular impact on the interpretation of significant differences in activation between clinical populations and controls, and highlight the constant need for development and improvement of the cognitive task for research on emotion and its regulation using fMRI. The development of cognitive tasks for fMRI experiments involves a long and regimented series of steps. The cognitive process under study needs to be identified and operationally defined before the task can be designed, programmed, tested, calibrated, and re-tested. The task must then be validated in a normative sample to ensure that the cognitive process under investigation is actually measured as designed. Finally, the cognitive neuroscience task must be tested in the MRI scanner with healthy volunteers before it can be used in clinical populations. As such, the process of task development is a major rate-limiting factor in using fMRI to study cognitive function in humans. We have developed a new task called the Face Emotion Task to objectively and dynamically test emotional processing and regulation. This task displays two faces with the same or different emotion expressions one after the other, with the first face as the prime and the second face as the target. The emotional priming with faces either enhances (in the congruent condition) or interferes with (in the incongruent condition, which has a further regulatory demand) the emotional processing of the target. These effects can be measured in both reaction time differences and brain activation patterns. To test recognition memory, previously displayed and new faces will both be used in the last session. This task can be used in conjunction with fMRI to study the neural circuitry related to: 1) facial and emotional processing; 2) the interaction of emotional content and emotional regulation; 3) automatic versus controlled components of emotional processing; 4) encoding and retrieval of episodic facial and emotional memory. These are all important cognitive processes that have been implicated in a variety of psychiatric disorders. The EFP task is currently being validated in a sample of college students and will be used in a study on anxiety disorder in patients with depression. Hypotheses: (1) Participants will respond more rapidly when target faces are preceded by a prime face with the same emotion (congruent condition) than a prime face with a different emotion (incongruent condition) or a non-face object image (neutral condition). (2) Fearful faces, whether displayed as primes or targets, will produce robust activation of the amygdala. (3) Emotional conflict (i.e., incongruent versus congruent condition) will activate the ACC and prefrontal cortex (PFC). (4) There will be a reciprocal relationship between the activation of the medial frontal region (including ACC and the ventromedial PFC) and the amygdala: lower activation of amygdala will be coupled with greater activation of the ACC and ventromedial PFC, which are involved in executive control to inhibit amygdala activity. (5) Newly displayed faces in the face recognition phase in the task will also produce robust greater activation of the amygdala and fusiform face area (FFA). (6) The retrieval of faces in the face recognition phase will produce robust activation of the hippocampus.
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