4月8日，国际著名杂志《自然—神经科学》Nature Neuroscience在线刊登了国外研究人员的最新研究成果“Localized microstimulation of primate pregenual cingulate cortex induces negative decision-making，”，文章中，研究者揭示了焦虑情绪与大脑前扣带皮层有关。
杂志上的一项研究表明，对猴子大脑前扣带皮层（pACC）的电流刺激会增加消极决策的概率，但服用抗焦虑药物可阻碍这种影响。pACC已被认为与人焦虑症和抑郁症有关，这项研究揭示了它是如何导致病理学行为的。
Graybiel等人提供两种奖励给猴子选择，其中较大的奖励伴随着对猴子的眼睛不停地吹气，较小的奖励则没有。结果发现，当猴子在选择大小两种奖励时，其大脑内各有一些神经细胞处于兴奋状态。这两组细胞几乎混杂在一起，但在猴子选择小奖励的时候，pACC的某一块区域中会有更多的神经细胞处于兴奋状态。如果对这些细胞进行电流刺激的话，猴子将更有可能选择小奖励，但这时让猴子服用抗焦虑药物的话，电流刺激的作用将受到阻碍。
患有焦虑症和抑郁症的人通常在面对成本效益交易时，具有选择障碍。该研究结果意味着，pACC在对决策过程中消极和焦虑情绪的控制调节方面起着关键作用。（生物谷Bioon.com）
doi:10.1038/nn.3088
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Localized microstimulation of primate pregenual cingulate cortex induces negative decision-making
Ken-ichi Amemori & Ann M Graybiel
The pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC) has been implicated in human anxiety disorders and depression, but the circuit-level mechanisms underlying these disorders are unclear. In healthy individuals, the pACC is involved in cost-benefit evaluation. We developed a macaque version of an approach-avoidance decision task used to evaluate anxiety and depression in humans and, with multi-electrode recording and cortical microstimulation, we probed pACC function as monkeys performed this task. We found that the macaque pACC has an opponent process-like organization of neurons representing motivationally positive and negative subjective value. Spatial distribution of these two neuronal populations overlapped in the pACC, except in one subzone, where neurons with negative coding were more numerous. Notably, microstimulation in this subzone, but not elsewhere in the pACC, increased negative decision-making, and this negative biasing was blocked by anti-anxiety drug treatment. This cortical zone could be critical for regulating negative emotional valence and anxiety in decision-making.
