Effects of estrogen variation on neural correlates of emotional response inhibition

Despite behavioral evidence that variation in ovarian hormones is associated with changes in affect, the neural basis of these processes is poorly understood. We combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with quantitative analysis of ovarian hormones in a within-subject design to investigate brain activation patterns during affective response inhibition, comparing activation between the early follicular (low estrogen and progesterone) and mid-luteal (high estrogen and progesterone) phases of the menstrual cycle in healthy women. There was significantly increased activation in the anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) while inhibiting response to positive words during the luteal, compared to the follicular phase. Furthermore, luteal phase estradiol level positively correlated with DLPFC activation while inhibiting response to positive words and negatively correlated with activation in several structures while inhibiting response to negative words, supporting estrogen's modulation of affective processing.     

Cholinergic enhancement modulates neural correlates of selective attention and emotional processing

Neocortical cholinergic afferents are proposed to influence both selective attention and emotional processing. In a study of healthy adults we used event-related fMRI while orthogonally manipulating attention and emotionality to examine regions showing effects of cholinergic modulation by the anticholinesterase physostigmine. Either face or house pictures appeared at task-relevant locations, with the alternative picture type at irrelevant locations. Faces had either neutral or fearful expressions. Physostigmine increased relative activity within the anterior fusiform gyrus for faces at attended, versus unattended, locations, but decreased relative activity within the posterolateral occipital cortex for houses in attended, versus unattended, locations. A similar pattern of regional differences in the effect of physostigmine on cue-evoked responses was also present in the absence of stimuli. Cholinergic enhancement augmented the relative neuronal response within the middle fusiform gyrus to fearful faces, whether at attended or unattended locations. By contrast, physostigmine influenced responses in the orbitofrontal, intraparietal and cingulate cortices to fearful faces when faces occupied task-irrelevant locations. These findings suggest that acetylcholine may modulate both selective attention and emotional processes through independent, region-specific effects within the extrastriate cortex. Furthermore, cholinergic inputs to the frontoparietal cortex may influence the allocation of attention to emotional information.     

The effects of prior pain experience on neural correlates of empathy for pain: An fMRI study

Neuroimaging studies have revealed partially shared neural substrates for both the actual experience of pain and empathy elicited by the pain of others. We examined whether prior pain exposure increased neural activity in the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC) and bilateral anterior insula (AI) as a correlate of empathy for pain. Participants (N = 64: 32 women, 32 men) viewed pictures displaying exposure to pressure pain (pain pictures) and pictures without any cue of pain (neutral pictures). Prior to the experiment, half of the participants were exposed to the same pain stimulus as the one seen in the pain pictures (pain exposure condition); the other half had no such experience (touch exposure condition). A balanced sex ratio was kept, to investigate possible sex differences. In the region-of-interest analyses, participants of the pain exposure condition showed decreased activity in the right AI and the aMCC relative to participants of the touch exposure condition. While in men, no differences were found in relation to their exposure condition, women with pain exposure showed decreased activity in the aMCC and additionally, in bilateral AI. Based on the entire sample, whole brain analyses revealed stronger activation in the retrosplenial cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and medial prefrontal cortex in the pain exposure condition. In conclusion, prior pain exposure did not increase, but decreased activity in regions regularly associated with empathy for pain. However, pain experience increased activity in regions associated with memory retrieval, perspective taking, and top-down emotion regulation, which might facilitate empathizing with others.     

护理人员对新生儿疼痛知识了解情况的调查

目的了解与新生儿疾病治疗相关科室的护理人员对新生儿疼痛相关知识的了解程度。并提出提高护理人员对新生儿疼痛知识了解的措施。方法采用自行设计的调查问卷,调查护理人员对新生儿疼痛知识的了解情况。结果护理人员对疼痛评估了解的为16．6%,认为疼痛知识能满足临床需要的为13．9％,经常能正确评估新生儿疼痛的为22．5％,认为医务人员非常有必要掌握新生儿常用疼痛评分方法的为64．9％。结论加强护理人员对新生儿疼痛相关知识的培训。可使护理人员充分认识新生儿疼痛的危害,对及时评估、预防和降低新生儿疼痛具有积极的意义。     

fMRI correlates of the episodic retrieval of emotional contexts

Functional neuroimaging studies reveal differences in neural correlates of the retrieval of emotional and nonemotional memories. In the present experiment, encoding of emotionally neutral pictures in association with positively, neutrally or negatively valenced background contexts led to differential modulation of neural activity elicited in a subsequent recognition memory test for these pictures. Recognition of stimuli previously studied in emotional compared to neutral contexts elicited enhanced activity in structures previously implicated in episodic memory, including the parahippocampal cortex, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. In addition, there was engagement of structures linked more specifically to emotional processing, including the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. These emotion-related effects displayed both valence-independent and valence-specific components. We discuss the findings in terms of current models of emotional memory retrieval.     

本科护士临床实习期间情商教育的探讨

情商(EQ)是人的情绪商数,是由美国心理学家彼得·梅耶教授于1990年提出的。情商包括五方面内容:认识自己的能力、控制自己的能力、为自己目标奋斗的能力、理解别人的能力和处理人际关系的能力[1]。随着人们对健康需求的提高,要求护士在为病人解决问题的过程中,关注病人的情绪、     

Modulation of pain ratings by expectation and uncertainty: Behavioral characteristics and anticipatory neural correlates

Expectations about the magnitude of impending pain exert a substantial effect on subsequent perception. However, the neural mechanisms that underlie the predictive processes that modulate pain are poorly understood. In a combined behavioral and high-density electrophysiological study we measured anticipatory neural responses to heat stimuli to determine how predictions of pain intensity, and certainty about those predictions, modulate brain activity and subjective pain ratings. Prior to receiving randomized laser heat stimuli at different intensities (low, medium or high) subjects (n=15) viewed cues that either accurately informed them of forthcoming intensity (certain expectation) or not (uncertain expectation). Pain ratings were biased towards prior expectations of either high or low intensity. Anticipatory neural responses increased with expectations of painful vs. non-painful heat intensity, suggesting the presence of neural responses that represent predicted heat stimulus intensity. These anticipatory responses also correlated with the amplitude of the Laser-Evoked Potential (LEP) response to painful stimuli when the intensity was predictable. Source analysis (LORETA) revealed that uncertainty about expected heat intensity involves an anticipatory cortical network commonly associated with attention (left dorsolateral prefrontal, posterior cingulate and bilateral inferior parietal cortices). Relative certainty, however, involves cortical areas previously associated with semantic and prospective memory (left inferior frontal and inferior temporal cortex, and right anterior prefrontal cortex). This suggests that biasing of pain reports and LEPs by expectation involves temporally precise activity in specific cortical networks.     

临床护理人员情绪智力与工作绩效关系调查

[目的]了解护理人员情绪智力分布状况,探讨情绪智力与工作绩效的关系。[方法]对7所医院629名护理人员的情绪智力及工作绩效进行测量,探求情绪智力与工作绩效的关系。[结果]护理人员情绪智力整体水平较高;年龄、职称对护士情绪智力有一定影响;情绪智力4个维度与工作绩效关系密切;当情绪智力4维度全部进入回归模型时,能够解释总变异的27.6%。[结论]护理管理者应加强对临床护理人员情绪智力的培养,进一步提高工作绩效。     

拉玛泽减痛分娩法的临床应用探讨

拉玛泽减痛分娩法是一种安全有效、在国外应用非常广泛的非药物分娩止痛法，但国内由于对其了解不全面，目前尚未广泛开展。在倡导自然分娩、重视非药物分娩止痛的今天，如何系统、有效地开展拉玛泽减痛分娩法，对提高护理质量、改善护患关系具有非常重要的现实意义。     

拉玛泽减痛分娩法的临床应用探讨

拉玛泽减痛分娩法是一种安全有效、在国外应用非常广泛的非药物分娩止痛法[1],但国内由于对其了解不全面,目前尚未广泛开展.在倡导自然分娩、重视非药物分娩止痛的今天,如何系统、有效地开展拉玛泽减痛分娩法,对提高护理质量、改善护患关系具有非常重要的现实意义.     

The neural correlates of subjective pleasantness

Processing of subjective pleasantness is essential in daily life decision making, particularly in the context of cognitive and environmental factors. Pleasure is mediated by a neural network and this network has been suggested to be the biological basis of pleasure including a whole range of different modalities and domains of pleasantness. This quantitative meta-analysis of brain imaging data focuses on studies 1) based on correlations between self-reported judgements of pleasantness and brain regions and investigates whether 2) immediate (during scanning) versus subsequent judgements (after scanning) differ in brain activity. We investigated concurrence across 40 studies reporting brain regions correlated with self-reported judgements of subjective pleasantness (attractiveness, liking or beauty) by means of activation likelihood estimation (ALE). Positive correlates of subjective pleasantness were found in mOFC, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, left ventral striatum, pregenual cortex, right cerebellum, left thalamus and the mid cingulate cortex. Negative correlates were found in left precentral gyrus, right cerebellum and right inferior frontal gyrus. A comparison of studies with subjective pleasantness judgement during or after scanning revealed no significant differences in brain activation. We conclude that subjective pleasantness judgements are directly related to brain regions that have been described as part of the reward circuitry (mOFC, ventral striatum). The results suggest that the evaluation of likability or pleasure is an automatic process and that it is neither elicited nor enhanced by instructions to report the outcome of these judgements.     

An emotional component analysis of chronic pain

The present study sought to determine the relative contribution of frustration, fear, anger and anxiety, to the unpleasantness and depression pain patients experience. Sixty-nine women and 74 men, with an average age of 47 years, were included. Patients underwent psychological evaluation which included use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and 7 visual analog scales (VAS) measuring degree of emotional unpleasantness, pain intensity, anxiety, frustration, fear, anger and depression. Test-retest reliability coefficients were significant for the negative feeling VAS yielding an average reliability coefficient of 0.82. Analyses relating the negative feeling state VAS to pain unpleasantness and depression indices from the MMPI (scale 2) and BDI (sum score) yielded significant canonical correlations. Multiple regression was used to clarify the relationships between negative feeling VAS, pain-related unpleasantness, and indices of depression. After statistically controlling for intensity of pain, anxiety and frustration predicted unpleasantness. Regression analyses indicate that anger is an important concomitant of the depression that pain patients experience. The results suggest that anger and frustration are critical concomitants of the pain experience. Treatment techniques specifically targeting anger and frustration in these patients may prove efficacious.     

The neural temporal dynamics of the intensity of emotional experience

Despite the fact that emotions involve multiple time-varying components, little is known about the underlying neural basis of these temporal dynamics. In this paper, we assess these temporal dynamics by using time-varying hemodynamic response functions (HRF) to model BOLD responses to emotional stimuli. We show that these time-varying HRFs lead to a better fit to the BOLD data and yield larger areas of significant activation than do conventional gamma-based canonical HRFs. We also report for the first time that intensity of emotional experience is associated with both magnitude and duration of brain activation. Specifically, greater negative emotional intensity was associated with greater magnitude of activation in the occipital cortex and with longer duration of activation in regions along the cortical midline associated with self-referent processing: the anterior medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. These data significantly advance our understanding of how the brain processes emotion and suggest that the intensity of a negative emotional experience is due in part to elaborative self-referent processing that is captured by the duration of neural activity in cortical midline structures. These data also underscore the importance of using modeling techniques that will help elucidate the chronometry of both normal and psychopathological emotional processes.     

Spatiotemporal mapping the neural correlates of acupuncture with MEG

Acupuncture is an ancient Eastern healing modality with putative therapeutic applications. Unfortunately, little is known about the central mechanisms by which acupuncture may exert its effects. In this study, 16 [corrected] healthy subjects were evaluated with magnetoencephalography (MEG) to map the location and timing of brain activity during low-frequency electroacupuncture (EA) and mechanical, noninsertive, sham acupuncture (SA) given at acupoint PC-6. Both EA and SA evoked brain responses that localized to contralateral primary somatosensory (SI) cortex. However, initial responses for EA peaked slightly earlier than those for SA and were located inferiorly within SI. Average equivalent current dipole strength was stronger (particularly at latencies >60 ms) for SA. These spatiotemporal differences between activations elicited by EA and SA are likely attributable to stimulus modality (electrical versus mechanical) and differences in the underlying somatosensory fibers transmitting these signals. The present data confirm that acupuncture modulates activity within somatosensory cortex, providing support for previous studies that suggest that the therapeutic effects of acupuncture are linked to SI modulation. Thus, MEG provides excellent spatiotemporal characterization of the somatosensory component of acupuncture, and future studies can contrast derived brain response parameters in healthy controls with those found in a diseased state.     

Developmental changes in the neural correlates of semantic processing

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to explore the neural correlates of semantic judgments in the auditory modality in a group of 9- to 15-year-old children. Subjects were required to indicate if word pairs were related in meaning. Consistent with previous findings in adults, children showed activation in bilateral superior temporal gyri (BA 22) for recognizing spoken words as well as activations in bilateral inferior frontal gyri (BAs 47, 45) and left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21) for semantic processing. The neural substrates of semantic association and age differences were also investigated. Words with strong semantic association elicited significantly greater activation in the left inferior parietal lobule (BA 40), whereas words with weak semantic association elicited activation in left inferior frontal gyrus (BAs 47/45). Correlations with age were observed in the left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21) and the right inferior frontal gyrus (BA 47). The pattern of results for semantic association implies that the left inferior parietal lobule effectively integrates highly related semantic features and the left inferior frontal gyrus becomes more active for words that require a greater search for semantic associations. The developmental results suggest that older children recruit the right inferior frontal gyrus as they conduct a broader semantic search and the left middle temporal gyrus to provide more efficient access to semantic representations.     

Social and emotional attachment in the neural representation of faces

To dissociate the role of visual familiarity from the role of social and emotional factors in recognizing familiar individuals, we measured neural activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects viewed (1) faces of personally familiar individuals (i.e. friends and family), (2) faces of famous individuals, and (3) faces of strangers. Personally familiar faces evoked a stronger response than did famous familiar faces and unfamiliar faces in areas that have been associated with 'theory of mind', and a weaker response in the amygdala. These response modulations may reflect the spontaneous activation of social knowledge about the personality and attitudes of close friends and relatives and the less guarded attitude one has around these people. These results suggest that familiarity causes changes in neural response that extend beyond a visual memory for a face.     

Neural correlates of envisioning emotional events in the near and far future

Being able to envision emotional events that might happen in the future has a clear adaptive value. This study addressed the functional neuroanatomy of this process and investigated whether it is modulated by temporal distance. Participants imagined positive and negative events pertaining to the near future or far future while their brain activity was measured with fMRI. The results demonstrate that the anterior part of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was more active in envisioning emotional events in the far future than in the near future, whereas the caudate nucleus was engaged in envisioning emotional (especially positive) situations in the near future. We argue that the anterior part of the vmPFC might assign emotional values to mental representations of future events that pertain to long-term goals. On the other hand, the caudate might support more concrete simulations of action plans to achieve rewarding situations in the near future.     

Supraspinal TRPV1 modulates the emotional expression of abdominal pain

The transient receptor potential vanilloid receptor type–1 (TRPV1) is critically involved in peripheral nociceptive processes of somatic and visceral pain. However, the role of the capsaicin receptor in the brain regarding visceral pain remains elusive. Here, we studied the contribution of TRPV1 to abdominal pain transmission at different nociceptive pathway levels using TRPV1 knock-out mice, resiniferatoxin-mediated deletion of TRPV1-positive primary sensory neurons, and intracerebral TRPV1 antagonism. We found that constitutive genetic TRPV1 deletion or peripheral TRPV1 deletion reduced acetic acid–evoked abdominal constrictions, without affecting referred abdominal hyperalgesia or allodynia in an acute pancreatitis model of visceral pain. Notably, intracerebral TRPV1 antagonism by SB 366791 significantly reduced chemical and inflammatory spontaneous abdominal nocifensive responses, as observed by reduced expressions of nociceptive facial grimacing, illustrating the affective component of pain. In addition to the established role of cerebral TRPV1 in anxiety, fear, or emotional stress, we demonstrate here for the first time that TRPV1 in the brain modulates visceral nociception by interfering with the affective component of abdominal pain.