抄録
Emotional responses are thought to play a vital role in survival and in our ability to adapt to our environment. It has been suggested that cognition is the most important component among the response in human. However little is known about cognition for emotional events in the brain. From these standpoints, we have done neuroimaging analyses to explore human emotional responses in the brain used by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) in healthy volunteers and psychiatric patients. At first, to investigate which areas of the brain play an important role in the perception of stressful event and the emotional response, we performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in patients with eating disorders (ED) that involved recognition of unpleasant words concerning body image. Our results showed that the amygdala and MPFC played an important part in processing unpleasant words concerning body image in ED. Secondly, We studied the neural activation associated with anticipations of emotional pictures using fMRI and MEG in healthy volunteers and patients with major depression. Our results suggested a top-down modulation from anterior brain regions of the network, which includes the anterior cingulate cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), insula, and amygdala, to visual cortex during certain negative anticipation. Moreover, in depressive patients compared to healthy controls, VLPFC was more activated during certain negative anticipation. These findings suggest the important role of certain negative anticipation in emotional responses. [J Physiol Sci. 2008;58 Suppl:S38]
