Alterations of Attention and Emotional Processing Following Childhood-Onset Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex (PFC), especially the medial sector, plays a crucial role in emotional processing. Damage to this region results in impaired processing of emotional information, perhaps attributable to an inability to initiate and maintain attention toward emotional materials, a process that i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral neuroscience 2014-02, Vol.128 (1), p.1-11
Main Authors: Sánchez-Navarro, Juan P., Driscoll, David, Anderson, Steven W., Tranel, Daniel, Bechara, Antoine, Buchanan, Tony W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affect - physiology
Age of Onset
Attention
Attention - physiology
Brain Damage
Children & youth
Emotional Processing
Emotions
Emotions - physiology
Female
Human
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Onset (Disorders)
Photic Stimulation
Prefrontal Cortex
Prefrontal Cortex - pathology
Prefrontal Cortex - physiopathology
Prepulse Inhibition
Reflex, Startle
Startle Reflex
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Summary:The prefrontal cortex (PFC), especially the medial sector, plays a crucial role in emotional processing. Damage to this region results in impaired processing of emotional information, perhaps attributable to an inability to initiate and maintain attention toward emotional materials, a process that is normally automatic. Childhood onset damage to the PFC impairs emotional processing more than adult-onset PFC damage. The aim of this work was to study the involvement of the PFC in attention to emotional stimuli, and to explore how age at lesion onset affects this involvement. To address these issues, we studied both the emotional and attentional modulation of the startle reflex. Our sample was composed of 4 patients with childhood-onset PFC damage, 6 patients with adult-onset PFC damage, and 10 healthy comparison participants. Subjects viewed 54 affective pictures; acoustic startle probes were presented at 300 ms after picture onset in 18 pictures (as an index of attentional modulation) and at 3,800 ms after picture onset in 18 pictures (as an index of emotional modulation). Childhood-onset PFC patients did not show attentional or emotional modulation of the response, in contrast to adult-onset PFC damage and comparison participants. Early onset damage to the PFC results, therefore, in more severe dysfunction in the processing of affective stimuli than adult-onset PFC damage, perhaps reflecting limited plasticity in the neural systems that support these processes.
ISSN:0735-7044
1939-0084
DOI:10.1037/a0035415