TY - JOUR
T1 - Brain circuits involved in emotional learning in antisocial behavior and social phobia in humans
AU - Veit, Ralf
AU - Flor, Herta
AU - Erb, Michael
AU - Hermann, Christiane
AU - Lotze, Martin
AU - Grodd, Wolfgang
AU - Birbaumer, Niels
PY - 2002/8/16
Y1 - 2002/8/16
N2 - While psychopaths (PP) lack anticipatory fear, social phobics (SP) are characterized by excessive fear. Criminal PP, SP and healthy controls (HC) participated in differential aversive delay conditioning with neutral faces as conditioned (CS) and painful pressure as unconditioned stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed differential activation in the limbic-prefrontal circuit (orbitofrontal cortex, insula, anterior cingulate, amygdala) in the HC. By contrast, the PP displayed brief amygdala, but no further brain activation. The SP showed increased activity to the faces in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex already during habituation. Thus, a hypoactive frontolimbic circuit may represent the neural correlate of psychopathic behavior, whereas an overactive frontolimbic system may underly social fear.
AB - While psychopaths (PP) lack anticipatory fear, social phobics (SP) are characterized by excessive fear. Criminal PP, SP and healthy controls (HC) participated in differential aversive delay conditioning with neutral faces as conditioned (CS) and painful pressure as unconditioned stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed differential activation in the limbic-prefrontal circuit (orbitofrontal cortex, insula, anterior cingulate, amygdala) in the HC. By contrast, the PP displayed brief amygdala, but no further brain activation. The SP showed increased activity to the faces in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex already during habituation. Thus, a hypoactive frontolimbic circuit may represent the neural correlate of psychopathic behavior, whereas an overactive frontolimbic system may underly social fear.
KW - Emotional learning
KW - Functional magnetic resonance imaging
KW - Pavlovian conditioning
KW - Psychopathy
KW - Skin conductance
KW - Social phobia
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0037119169&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0037119169&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/S0304-3940(02)00519-0
DO - 10.1016/S0304-3940(02)00519-0
M3 - Article
C2 - 12147314
AN - SCOPUS:0037119169
VL - 328
SP - 233
EP - 236
JO - Neuroscience Letters
JF - Neuroscience Letters
SN - 0304-3940
IS - 3
ER -