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Brain activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex correlates with individual differences in negative affect - PubMed

  • ️Tue Jan 01 2002

Brain activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex correlates with individual differences in negative affect

David H Zald et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002.

Abstract

Individuals differ in the extent to which they experience negative mood states over time. To explore the relationship between individual differences in negative affect (NA) and brain activity, we asked healthy subjects participating in positron-emission tomography scans to rate the extent to which they had experienced NA terms during the month before scanning. In two independent samples of subjects, resting regional cerebral blood flow within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) correlated with ratings of NA. The finding converges with recent evidence implicating the VMPFC in emotional and autonomic processing. Moreover, it demonstrates that variability in basal VMPFC activity across subjects is related to individual differences in subjective emotional experience.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1

The figure displays the VMPFC area where rCBF correlates with NA in Study 1. For display purposes the correlation maps were resampled to 1 mm3 pixels, thresholded to only show areas with significant correlations, and overlayed on a high-resolution, Talairach-warped MRI template. The correlations are color coded by their level of statistical significance with areas in purple equivalent to P < 0.05, and areas in white equivalent to P < 0.001. The figure displays a transverse slice through z = −16 with the peak area of correlation marked with an arrow. A highly significant correlation can also be seen in the left parainsular region, but this focus failed to replicate. R, right; L, left.

Figure 2
Figure 2

Scatter plots of NA and rCBF at the peak correlated pixel within the posterior VMPFC. Examination of both scatter plots reveals the presence of an outlier with particularly low VMPFC rCBF in each study. However, in both cases the correlation remained significant even after post hoc reanalysis with the outlier removed (r = 0.39, P = 0.005 for Study 1; r = 0.44, P = 0.005 for Study 2). Because no a priori reasons warranted removal of these subjects' data from the analyses, the data were included in all other reported analyses.

Figure 3
Figure 3

VMPFC areas demonstrating correlations with NA in Study 2. The left side of the figure displays a transverse slice through z = −14. The right side of the figure displays a sagittal slice of the frontal lobe through x = 3. In both slices the posterior VMPFC focus is marked with a P. The right hemisphere component of the anterior VMPFC focus also appears on the sagittal slice (marked with an A). However, the anterior VMPFC area demonstrating convergence across the two studies falls strictly in the left hemisphere. R, right; L, left; Ant, anterior; Pos, posterior.

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