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Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Changes During Visually Induced Subjective Sadness in Healthy Elderly Persons

Received March 16, 2001; revised October 15, 2001; accepted October 22, 2001. From the Department of Psychiatry, Department of Radiology, and PET Center, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA. Address correspondence to Dr. Paradiso, The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Psychiatry Research–MEB, Iowa City, IA 52242-1000. E-mail: sergio-paradiso{at}uiowa.edu

This study examined regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) changes associated with visually induced sad affect in healthy elderly persons. Subjects viewed sadness-laden, happiness-laden, and emotionally neutral image sets while rCBF was recorded using [¹⁵O] water PET. The sad image set included human faces and scenery/objects ("scenes"). To control for secondary sensory processing, the neutral and happy comparison sets included exclusively either human faces or scenes. During the sad condition, the ventral prefrontal and temporal cortices were more active compared with happy and neutral scenes conditions and the thalamus was more active compared with happy and neutral faces conditions. Ventral prefrontal cortex and thalamus were associated with processing of sad visual stimuli, whether compared with neutral or happy stimuli. The specific findings associated with sad affect were contingent on the comparison stimuli content (scenes or human faces), not affect (i.e., comparison with neutral or happy conditions).

Key Words: Emotion • PET Studies • Amygdala • Prefrontal Cortex • Thalamus

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