Electrical neuroimaging reveals content-specific effects of threat in primary visual cortex and fronto-parietal attentional networks

Abstract

Whereas effects of anticipatory anxiety on attention are usually assumed to remain largely undifferentiated, discrepant findings in the literature suggest that, depending on its content and causes, different modulatory effects on attention control and early sensory processing may arise.Using electrical neuroimaging and psychophysiology in a cross-over design, we tested the hypothesis that different types of anticipatory anxiety (bodily vs. psychological), transiently induced in healthy participants, had dissociable effects on brain systems regulating attention control. Attention control corresponded to the ability to maintain efficient goal-directed processing (indexed by the P300 ERP component and by activations in the attentional networks), as well as the ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli in early sensory cortex (C1 component, indexing attentional gating in V1). Results showed that while psychosocial threat, very much like perceptual load, primarily led to a stronger gating in V1, bodily threat resulted in impaired goaldirected processing within the fronto-parietal attentional network, as well as decreased filtering in V1. These results suggest that anticipatory anxiety is multifaceted, exerting different effects on attention control and early visual processing depending on its sub-type.

Spatial attention affects the early processing of neutral versus fearful faces when they are task-irrelevant: a classifier study of the EEG C1 component

“…The C1 also has been found to be sensitive to attentional load (Rauss et al, 2009;Rossi & Pourtois, 2012, 2014, 2017. Our results parallel those of Rossi & Pourtois (2017), who found a difference in the C1 amplitude between task-irrelevant fearful and neutral eyes but only when attention was diverted from the eyes using a high demanding task (Bhigh load^).…”

Independent effects of motivation and spatial attention in the human visual cortex

“…Nevertheless, it appears unlikely that unspecific arousal might account for our C1 modulation given that previous ERP studies failed to evidence a clear link between physiological arousal and changes in C1 amplitude (Rossi and Pourtois, 2014). …”

“…C1 amplitudes were quantified by semiautomatic peak detection in the time window from 50 to 100 ms following target presentation in channels A4, A19, A20 and A21, corresponding to electrodes spanning from CPPz to POz along the midline, in accordance with previous literature (Rossi and Pourtois, 2014). For stimuli presented in the UVF, the C1 was identified as the most negative peak, whereas for LVF presentation, the C1 was scored as the most positive peak.…”

“…Due to the retinotopic organization of V1, the C1 shows reversed polarity in response to stimuli presented in the upper versus the lower visual hemifield. In recent years, a number of top-down factors have been shown to affect the C1, including spatial and feature-based attention (Kelly et al , 2008; Karns and Knight, 2009; Proverbio et al , 2010), perceptual load (Rauss et al , 2009, 2012; Rossi and Pourtois, 2012), perceptual and aversive learning (Stolarova et al , 2006; Pourtois et al , 2008); and anxiety, mood state and emotional processing (Pourtois et al , 2004; Eldar et al , 2010; West et al , 2010; Rossi and Pourtois, 2012, 2014; Vanlessen et al , 2013, 2014). Importantly, however, to date it is unknown whether motivation can modulate the C1 component in human subjects.…”

Training working memory to improve attentional control in anxiety: A proof-of-principle study using behavioral and electrophysiological measures

“…Since high working memory capacity has been found to eliminate the adverse effect of acute stress (Otto et al, 2013), the Flanker task also included a state anxiety manipulation of presenting loud bursts of white noise randomly in half of the blocks. State anxiety manipulations using white noise have previously found to be successful (see Rossi & Pourtois, 2014). Using this manipulation, we aimed to assess selective attention under challenging conditions where the need to address the task demands is considered to place greater challenges on working memory functions for high anxious individuals (see Derakshan & Eysenck, 1997;Berggren, Richards, Taylor, & Derakshan, 2013).…”