人类对情绪事件效价强度的易感性及神经机制

The Human Susceptibility to the Valence Strength of Emotional Stimuli:Neural Mechanisms

人类情绪无疑有强度的差异。然而,长期以来人类情绪强度的易感性未能引起足够关注。通过系统操纵刺激材料的效价强度,作者及研究团队分别从情绪易感性本身,情绪影响高级认知,以及个体差异三个层次系统探讨了人类对情绪事件效价强度的易感性及其神经机制。结果发现:1)、相比正性刺激,人类对负性刺激的效价强度更敏感,这一效应可能跟右侧海马/杏仁核的警觉功能有关联。2)、与上述结果相一致,不同效价强度的负性情绪对新异性加工、目标觉察、执行控制等高级认知过程具有显著不同的影响。3)、人类情绪强度的易感性具有显著个体差异:相比男性,女性对轻度负性情绪事件易感性更强。相比中向人群,外倾人群对愉悦刺激的情绪易感性更强,而对轻度负性事件的情绪易感性更弱。

The humans experience emotion at apparently distinct valence strength which, however, is out of the research focus until recent years. Through manipulating the valence strength of emotional stimuli, we systematically addressed the human susceptibility to the valence strength of emotional stimuli from the perspectives of the emotion susceptibility itself, the emotion impact on higher cognition and the individual specialty. The results showed that the human brain is more sensitive to the valence strength of unpleasant versus pleasant stimuli, which may be associated with the emotion alerting function of the right amygdale/hippocampus. Secondly, consistent with the above findings, unpleasant emotion induction of diverse strength impacts higher cognition, such as novelty processing, target detection and behavioral inhibitory control, differently at each stage of the processing stream. Thirdly, there are significant individual differences in brain susceptibility to emotional events. Compared to males, females are more susceptible to mildly unpleasant events. Moreover, compared with ambiverts, extraverts are more susceptible to pleasant stimuli regardless of emotion intensity, and are less susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of decreased valence strength.