| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
YONEKURA Yoshiharu Fukui Medical University, High Energy Research Center, Professor, 高エネルギー医学研究センター, 教授 (60135572)
YAMADA Hiroki Fukui Medical University, University Hospital, Research Associate, 医学部附属病院, 助手 (70252004)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
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| Research Abstract |
We completed fMRI studies which were conducted to investigate amygdala activation in patients with schizophrenia and normal subjects during emotional intensity judgment from April, 2000 to March, 2002 and published in Schizophrenia Research that exaggerated amygdala activation found in the schizophrenic patients may reflect impaired gating of sensory input containing emotion.
We investigated, using the 3 Tesla -functional MRI and 16 normal volunteers, how the amygdala interacts with other cortical regions while subjects are judging the sex or emotion of faces with negative, positive, or neutral emotion. While significant activation during each of the two face recognition tasks was observed in several regions including the bilateral prefrontal cortex, lateral fusiform gyrus, and inferior occipital cortex, the amygdala activation did not reach significant. Since significant amygdala activation was not found, we have not extended the study to the patients yet. However, as each of 20 unfamiliar faces was repeatedly presented 18 times during 9 sessions in the present experiment, it was possible that activation in amygdala was habituated with repeated facial stimuli. Then, we explored the brain regions which showed decreasing or increasing activation as the sessions proceeded. The analysis revealed that activation in the bilateral posterior cingulate cortex was increased with repetition of the unfamiliar facial stimuli, while activation in the bilateral amygdala and left medial fusiform gyrus was decreased. Thus, the posterior cingulate cortex and amygdala may work reciprocally on habituation and acquisition of familiarity to unfamiliar facial stimuli presented repeatedly.
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