ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2018, Vol. 50 ›› Issue (6): 655-666.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2018.00655

• 研究报告 • 上一篇    下一篇

尾状核-眶部内侧前额叶的功能连接与反应性攻击的关系:基于静息态功能磁共振研究

江琦1(), 侯璐璐1,2, 邱江3, 李长燃1, 王焕贞1   

  1. 1 西南大学心理学部, 心理健康教育中心, 重庆 400715
    2 南京大学社会学院心理学系, 南京 210023
    3 西南大学心理学部, 认知与人格教育部重点实验室, 重庆 400715
  • 收稿日期:2016-07-23 发布日期:2018-04-28 出版日期:2018-06-01
  • 通讯作者: 江琦 E-mail:jiangqi@swu.edu.cn
  • 作者简介:江琦为共同第一作者。|侯璐璐为共同第一作者。

The relationship between the caudate nucleus-orbitomedial prefrontal cortex connectivity and reactive aggression: A resting-state fMRI study

JIANG Qi1(), HOU Lulu1,2, QIU Jiang3, LI Changran1, WANG Huanzhen1   

  1. 1 Mental Health Research Center of Southwest University, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
    2 Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavior Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
    3 Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of Southwest University, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
  • Received:2016-07-23 Online:2018-04-28 Published:2018-06-01
  • Contact: JIANG Qi E-mail:jiangqi@swu.edu.cn

摘要:

采用修改后的Taylor攻击范式, 将被试为虚拟对手选择的白噪音的惩罚强度作为反应性攻击的指标, 选取眶部内侧前额叶(Orbitomedial Prefrontal Cortex, OMPFC)作为种子点, 考察静息状态下正常人群OMPFC与其他脑区的连接及其与反应性攻击之间的关系。功能连接结果表明, 左侧OMPFC与右侧角回(Angular gyrus)、左侧OMPFC与双侧尾状核(Caudate nucleus)、右侧OMPFC与右侧尾状核的功能连接与反应性攻击显著负相关。格兰杰因果分析的结果进一步表明, 右侧尾状核到右侧OMPFC的效应连接与反应性攻击呈显著负相关, 尤其是与激发条件下的反应性攻击呈显著负相关。这表明, 静息状态下OMPFC与尾状核的连接与反应性攻击有着密切的关系。

关键词: 反应性攻击, 静息态功能磁共振, 功能连接, 效应连接, 格兰杰因果分析, 眶部内侧前额叶, 尾状核

Abstract:

Reactive aggression has been widely concerned by researchers because of its serious impact on society, such as violent crimes. Existing neuroimaging studies using patients with high levels of aggression indicated a network of brain regions subserve reactive aggression, including amygdala, caudate nucleus, and orbitofrontal cortex. Furthermore, researchers believed that reduced prefrontal activity along with heightened subcortical activity in the context of provocative stimuli poses an increased risk for reactive aggression. However, evidence for this theory in healthy population is lacking, especially this independently of the experiment task.

In this study, the modified TAP was used and the punishment levels selected for the virtual opponents serve as indicator of reactive aggression. Based on the previous researches, Orbitomedial Prefrontal (OMPFC) was selected as the seed to investigate the relationship of reactive aggression and the connectivity between OMPFC and other brain regions using resting state fMRI. Thirty-night undergraduates (mean age = 20.05 ± 0.92 years old) were enrolled in the experiment. The resting state functional magnetic resonance (rs-fMRI) data was acquired using Echo Planar Imaging (EPI) sequence from a 3-T Siemens Magnetom Trio scanner (Siemens Medical, Erlangen, Germany). This scanning acquired 242 volumes with TR = 2 s (lasting 8 min and 8 sec). rs-fMRI data was processed and analyzed using the REST (Resting-State fMRI Data Analysis Toolkit) toolbox to calculate Functional Connectivity (FC) and Granger Causality Analysis (GCA), which reflects the functional and effective connectivity among different areas, respectively. The results of FC indicated that the functional connectivity between the left OMPFC and right angular gyrus, left OMPFC and bilateral caudate nucleus, right OMPFC and right caudate nucleus were significantly correlated with the reactive aggression. Furthermore, the follow-up GCA indicated that the effective connectivity of right caudate nucleus to the right OMPFC was correlated significantly with reactive aggression, especially in the provocative condition.

The caudate nucleus plays an important role in flexibly responding to the environment. It is activated in response to reward. When the individuals thought the aggression was valuable and seemed to receive reward after the aggression, the caudate nucleus was also activated. Furthermore, a study combined PET and fMRI and revealed a strong relationship between the caudate nucleus and cortical areas associated with executive functioning (i.e., the function of prefrontal cortex). Another study demonstrated that violent offenders behaved more aggressively and showed significantly higher brain reactivity to provocations within the caudate nucleus, as well as reduced caudate nucleus-prefrontal cortex connectivity. To sum up, these results suggest that the connectivity between OMPFC and caudate nucleus is closely related to reactive aggression. It provides some evidence for further revealing the neural mechanism of reactive aggression, and firstly made a systematic analysis of reactive aggression using resting state functional connectivity and effective connectivity.

Key words: reactive aggression, resting-state fMRI, functional connectivity, effective connectivity, Granger causality analysis, OMPFC, caudate nucleus

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