A research group led by Associate Professor Kazuya Motomura of the Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya University, Professor Satoshi Umeda of the Faculty of Letters, Keio University, and Associate Professor Yuri Terazawa has revealed a brain function network related to emotion recognition through awake surgery for patients with brain tumors. I made it.
It is not yet known how the network in the brain works to recognize emotions such as happy, sad, and annoyed.For brain tumors, awake surgery is performed to remove the tumor while preserving the patient's brain function, but some patients whose tumors have been removed by awake surgery have emotional changes, especially decreased motivation and motility. In some cases, such symptoms may occur, and elucidation of the mechanism of brain and emotion is an urgent issue.
This time, the group performed a task of recognizing facial expressions from facial photographs during awake surgery for patients with brain tumors.As a result, direct stimulation of the anterior part of the insular cortex during awake surgery enhances anger perception, while postoperative (after removal of the insular cortex) reduces anger perception, and conversely. It turns out that the perception of sadness increases.This result suggests that the insular cortex is involved in changes in emotional perception such as anger and sadness.
It is very significant that this result proved that the insular cortex is closely related to emotion recognition, and in the future, when removing brain tumors, not only the preservation of language and motor function, but also the "heart (emotion)" identified this time. It is expected that this will lead to the development of a new awake surgical method that excises while preserving the function of "recognition)".
Paper information:[Brain Structure and Function] Anterior insular cortex stimulation and its effects on emotion recognition
