健康与遗传心理学研究室知识库

顿悟是心理治疗中的重要事件，然而心理治疗领域顿悟的大脑神经机制在很大程度上仍是未知的。己有研究表明在心理治疗中使用隐喻可能是诱发顿悟的有效方式。在过去的研究中，我们建立了基于隐喻的微型咨询对话范式来考察心理治疗情境中的顿悟。在该范式中，先给被试呈现一个心理痛苦情境，然后给被试呈现一个隐喻解答或非隐喻解答来诱发不同程度的顿悟。己有研究表明，相比于非隐喻解答，在痛苦情境中提供隐喻解答不仅可以促进更强的顿悟体验，而且激活了海马、杏仁核等与顿悟加工密切相关脑区更强的活动。本研究试图利用事件相关的功能性磁共振成像技术和基于隐喻的微型咨询对话范式对心理治疗领域隐喻促进顿悟和长时记忆的心理神经机制进行深入地探讨，具体包括两个研究:

顿悟是创造性思维的一种典型形式，新颖性和适配性是创造性思维的两个核心特征。目的:研究1通过两个行为实验和一个fMRI实验探讨了解答新颖性和情境适配性对于心理痛苦情境中顿悟诱发的影响以及分离顿悟中新颖性和适配性加工的脑机制。

方法:研究1中的每个实验都包括了解答的新颖性和情境的适配性两个因素，其中解答的新颖性是通过呈现隐喻解答或非隐喻解答来操纵，情境的适配性是通过在解答前呈现一个与解答有关的心理痛苦情境或无关的对照情境来操从。具体来讲:实验1和实验2分别采用无意义的文字描述和空白的字符描述作为不适配的对照情境考察情境适配性和解答新颖性对顿悟产生的影响。进一步分离隐喻促进顿悟过程中解答新颖性和情境适配性各自加工的脑机制，实验3中将46名被试随机分为两组。在扫描的过程中，给一组被试先呈现一个心理痛苦情境，另一组被试先呈现一个负性图片的文字描述，然后分别呈现一个隐喻、非隐喻或问题重述解答。

结果:结果表明解答的新颖性和情境的适配性交互作用显著，行为结果显示新颖的隐喻解答在适配的心理痛苦情境下诱发了最积极的情绪和最强烈的顿悟体验;脑成像结果发现了三个大脑网络:(1)顿悟加工(新颖且适配条件)主要与双侧海马、双侧杏仁核、右侧额上回、左侧颗上回和颗中回等脑区的激活密切相关;(2)单独的新颖性加工主要与双侧梭状回、左侧额下回和额中回，以及双侧枕下回和枕中回等脑区的激活密切相关;(3)单独的适配性加工主要依赖于左侧顶下小叶的激活。

己有一些研究表明顿悟具有增强记忆的优势效应，顿悟过程中杏仁核的活动可以预测这种记忆优势，研究2旨在考察顿悟的这种记忆优势及其神经机制能否拓展到心理治疗领域和基于隐喻的微型咨询对话范式。

方法:研究2包括了三个实验，每个实验都由学习和记忆测试两个阶段构成。实验4将30名被试随机分为三组，分别在学习结束后20分钟、1天和7天进行解答新旧再认测试。为了使记住和忘记的隐喻解答数量达到恰当的比例以满足fMRI数据分析要求，实验_5在记忆测试阶段增加了一个主题词多选任务。实验6选取了37名被试利用相继记忆范式考察顿悟促进记忆编码的脑机制。学习阶段进行fMRI扫描，一周后返回进行记忆测试任务。

结果发现:C1)隐喻解答的再认成绩显著优于非隐喻解答，并且隐喻解答的Pr值随时间逐渐下降，而非隐喻解答的Pr值则保持不变。C2)后续记住的隐喻解答在学习阶段的顿悟性显著高于忘记的隐喻解答，并且后续记住的隐喻解答相比于忘记的隐喻解答在编码阶段显著激活了海马、杏仁核更强的活动。

综上所述，这些证据表明:在心理治疗领域，情境的适配性和解答的新颖性对于顿悟的产生都是非常重要的，新颖的隐喻解答在适配的情境下会诱发最积极的情绪和最强烈的顿悟体验并且显著激活了双侧海马和杏仁核、左侧颗上回和颗中回等与顿悟加工密切相关脑区更强的活动;强烈的顿悟体验会促进隐喻解答的记忆保持成绩，其中海马、杏仁核的活动能够对一周后隐喻解答的记忆成绩进行预测。

Insight is an important event in the field of psychotherapy, however, the neural mechanisms of insight in the domain of psychotherapy were still largely unknown. Some studies have indicated that the use of metphor may be an effective way to induce insight during the psychotherapy. In a previous study, we have created a paradigm of metaphor-based micro-counseling dialogues to investigate the insight in the domain of psychotherapy. In this paradigm, participants first read a mental distress scenario, and then a metaphorical or literal solution was provided to induce different levels of insightfulness. Previous studies have demonstrated that: relative to the literal solutions, metaphorical solutions provided in mental distress scenarios could promote higher insightfulness and activated stonger activaties in hippocampus and amygdale which were associated with insight processing. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI and the paradigm of metaphor-based micro-counseling dialogues were applied in this dissertation to further investigate the psychological and neural mechanisms of insight and long-term memory enhanced by metaphors in the domain of psychotherapy. Specifically, this dissertation was consisted of two studies.

Insight is a typical form of creative thinking in which novelty and appropriateness are two key factors. Aims: The first study included two behavioral and one fMRI experiments and aimed to investigate the effect of novelty of solution and appropriateness of scenario on insight induced in a mental distress scenario and dissociated the neural mechanisms of novelty and appropriateness processing during insight.

Methods: There were two factors in each experiments in the first study, one is the novelty of solution manipulated by providing a metaphorical or literal solution and the other is the appropriateness of scenario manipulated by providing a mental distress scenario that is related to solution or unrelated control preceding the solution. Specifically, to investigate the effect of novelty of solutions and appropriateness of scenarios on insight, nonsensical sentences or blank symbols were created as inappropriate scenarios in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, respectively. In order to further dissociate the neural correlates of novelty and appropriateness processing during insight, 46 participants were randomly assigned two groups in Experiment 3.During scanning, one group was first provided a mental distress scenario and another group was first provided a description of negative picture, then both followed by a metaphorical, literal or problem-restatement solution.

Results: The results indicated that the interactions of novelty of solution and appropriateness of scenarios were significant. Behavioral results showed that the ratings of positve emotionality and insightfulness were the highest for the metaphorcial solutions when provided in the appropriate mental distress scenarios. Imaging results further indicated that there were three brain networks: (1)the processing of insight (both novel and appropriate) was associated with activations of bilateral hippocampus and amygdale, right superior frontal gyrus, left middle and superior temporal gyrus; (2) the processing of novelty alone depended on bilateral fusiform gyrus, left inferior and middle frontal gyrus, bilateral inferior and middle occipital gyrus; (3) the processing of appropriateness alone relied on activation of the left inferior parietal lobule.

Several studies have indicated that insight has some advantages to enhance the long-term memory, and the activations of amygdala during insight could be used to predict subsequent memory performance. The second study was aimed to examine whether the memory advantage of insight and its related brain corrlates could extended to the domain of psychotherapy and the paradigm of metaphor-based micro-counseling dialogues.

Methods: Study 2 consisted of three experiments, each of them was consisted of a learning and memory testing phrase. In the Experiment 4, 30 participants were randomly administered a recognition test after three different time lags: 20 minutes, lday, and l week. Experiment 5 added another mutli-choice task of topic words to make the numbers of subsequently remembered items and subsequently forgotten items fit the requirement to fMRI data analysis. Experiments 6 applied the subsequent memory paradigm to investigate the neural mechanism of insight enhancing long-term memory encoding. The learning session was undergoing fMRI scanning, and the testing task was conducted 1 week later after learning.

Results: The results indicated that: (1)the recognition performances of metaphorical solutions were significant better than those of literal solutions，and the Pr of metphorcial solutions would decline as time goes on, while the Pr of literal solutions would hold the line. (2) relative to the subsequently forgotten items, subsequently remembered metaphorical solutions induced higher insightfulness and engaged stronger acitivities in the hippocampus and amygdala during the encoding phrase.

In sum, these evidences suggested that the novelty of metpahorical solutions and the appropriateness of mental distress scenarios were both important to induce insight during psychotherapy. These metaphorcial solutions with high novelty would trigger the strongest experience of postivie emotioanlity and insightfulness when applied in metal distress scenarios with high appropriatenss, and would engaged more activities in the bilateral hippocampus and amygdala, right superior frontal gyrus, and left superior and middle temporal gyrus. The strong experience of insight would enhance the long-term memory of metaphorical solutions, and the activations of hippocampus and amygdala during insight would predict which solutions will remain one week later.