研究期間：10301~10312;Witnessing emotional events such as pictures of sexual content may affect on-going cognitive processes such as inhibitory control and decision-making. The main goal of this study is to investigate the underlying neural mechanisms of emotion and motivation and their effects on cognitive control by using fMRI. The major questions addressed in this project include: (1) the neural substrates of gender difference in how emotion and motivation affects response inhibition and decision-making; (2) whether or not the effects of emotion and motivation on inhibitory control will be predictable by gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) or dopamine concentrations; and (3) combining fMRI results with Electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate possible connections between emotional brain and cognitive brain on response inhibition, memory and direct forgetting. Various tools, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), will be used to measure the parameters of interest, including emotional stop signal tasks, cued risk tasks, card guessing task, and emotional visual search task. This project will be an important and a systematic study to investigate the underlying neural mechanisms of emotion and motivation and their effects on cognitive processes. The proposed experiments will not only elucidate the behavioral characteristics of emotional effects on inhibitory control, decision making, and their neural mechanisms, but also possible therapeutic applications and interventions for ADHD and depression alike.
