Mismatch negativity (MMN) stands at the crossroads between explicit and implicit emotional processing

Chen, Chenyi; Hu, Chia Hsuan; Cheng, Yawei

doi:10.1002/hbm.23349

Cited by 25 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…the 71 effect of expectation on conscious perception is exaggerated for emotional stimuli. Previous studies have found 72 that surprise-related evoked potentials are larger and earlier for emotional than neutral stimuli (Vogel et al, 2015, 73 Kovarski et al, 2017, Chen et al, 2017. If the effect of expectation is even larger for emotional stimuli, as this 74 suggests, then we might expect that earlier conscious perception of expected than unexpected stimuli (after an 75 initial period of unawareness) is even more extreme for emotional stimuli.…”

Section: Introduction 28mentioning

confidence: 81%

Surprising Threats Accelerate Evidence Accumulation for Conscious Perception

McFadyen

Smout

Tsuchiya

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

15Our survival depends on how well we can rapidly detect threats in our environment. To facilitate this, the brain is 16 faster to bring threatening or rewarding visual stimuli into conscious awareness than neutral stimuli. Unexpected 17 events may indicate a potential threat, and yet we tend to respond slower to unexpected than expected stimuli. It 18 is unclear if or how these effects of emotion and expectation interact with one's conscious experience. To 19 investigate this, we presented neutral and fearful faces with different probabilities of occurance in a breaking 20 continuous flash suppression (bCFS) paradigm. Across two experiments, we discovered that fulfilled prior 21 expectations hastened responses to neutral faces but had either no significant effect (Experiment 1) or the opposite 22 effect (Experiment 2) on fearful faces. Drift diffusion modelling revealed that, while prior expectations accelerated 23 stimulus encoding time (associated with the visual cortex), evidence was accumulated at an especially rapid rate 24 for unexpected fearful faces (associated with activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus). Hence, these findings 25 demonstrate a novel interaction between emotion and expectation during bCFS, driven by a unique influence of 26 surprising fearful stimuli that expedites evidence accumulation in a fronto-occipital network. 27 Like predictable events, threatening stimuli are also prioritised for conscious access (Otten et al., 2017). For 63 example, fearful faces , snakes and spiders (Gomes et al., 2017), and fear-conditioned stimuli (Gayet et al., 2016) 64 are consciously perceived earlier than neutral stimuli during breaking continuous flash suppression (bCFS; 65 Tsuchiya and Koch, 2005, Jiang et al., 2007). Fearful stimuli have been shown to increase the rate of evidence 66To test the three hypotheses above, we conducted two bCFS experiments and one control experiment (see 101 Supplementary Materials).In Experiment 1, we established how expectation interacts with threat in bringing 102 stimuli into conscious perception. In Experiment 2, we adapted the design of Experiment 1 to incorporate EEG so 103 that we could observe the spatio-temporal maps of neural activity underlying the effects of emotion and expectation 104 during bCFS. We also conducted drift diffusion modelling (DDM) to examine which parameters of the decision-105 making process explained the differences in response time between conditions and how this was reflected in neural 106 activity. DDM has been used in previous studies investigating consciousness that equate the upper decision 107 boundary to the threshold for awareness (De Loof et al., 2016, Kang et al., 2017. Here, response times in the 108 bCFS paradigm reflected a perceptual decision (whether the face was rotated clockwise or anticlockwise) that 109 required conscious perception (Kang et al., 2017). We investigated how the rate of evidence accumulation (drift 110 rate; v), sensory processing and/or motor execution (non-decision time; t0), and the decision bounda...

show abstract

Section: Introduction 28mentioning

confidence: 81%

Surprising Threats Accelerate Evidence Accumulation for Conscious Perception

McFadyen

Smout

Tsuchiya

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore, given that anxiety might involve a hyper-or-elevated baseline level of arousal to neutral stimuli (Canli and Lesch, 2007; Chen, et al, 2017; Top, et al, 2016), we further conducted detailed comparisons between explicit and implicit conditions to fearful and neutral faces (EF−IF; EN−IN), respectively. A two-way ANOVA with one within-subject variable (emotion: Neutral vs.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The unexpected presence of emotional spoken syllables embedded in a passive oddball paradigm were able to activate the amygdala, which was associated with individual differences in social orientation (Schirmer, et al, 2008). The amygdala reactivity to explicit and implicit fearful faces exhibited opposite associations with MMN (Chen, et al, 2017). Thus, it is no surprise to see a dissociation regarding the coupling between AQ and amygdala reactivity dependent on explicit and implicit threat.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that the threat-processing system is more reactive to ambiguous cues, the amygdala appears more reactive to fearful than angry faces (Whalen, et al, 2001), as fearful faces signify the presence of danger without providing information about its source. Consequently, amygdala reactivity to fearful faces is a reliable way of probing the neural correlates underlying anxiety (Bishop, et al, 2004; Chen, et al, 2017). Neuroimaging research has shown that the amygdala is engaged in implicit processing in addition to explicit processing of threats (Morris, et al, 1998; Whalen, et al, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Unmasking Anxiety in Autism: Explicit and Implicit Threatening Face Stimuli Dissociate Amygdala-centered Functional Connectivity

Chen¹,

Chen²,

Martínez³

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundAnxiety is the most prevalent comorbidity in individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Amygdala reactivity to explicit and implicit threat processing is predictive of anxiety-related symptomatology. The neural mechanisms underlying the link between anxiety and ASD remains elusive.MethodsIn this fMRI study, we recruited young adults with ASD (N = 31) and matched them with controls, then proceeded to assess their autistic and anxiety traits by the use of the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S), respectively; and scanned their hemodynamic responses, including amygdala, in response to explicit and implicit (backwardly masked) perception of threatening faces.ResultsAs compared to controls, the amygdala reactivity in ASD subjects was significantly lower to explicit threat, but comparable for implicit threat. The correlations of the amygdala reactivity with the AQ and STAI-S were dissociated depending on threat processing (explicit or implicit). Furthermore, the amygdala in ASD relative to controls had a more negative functional connectivity with the superior parietal cortex, fusiform gyrus, and hippocampus for explicit threat, whereas a more positive connectivity with the medial prefrontal cortex, temporal pole, and hippocampus for implicit threat.ConclusionIn ASD, the transmission of socially relevant information along dorsal and ventral neural pathways centered on the amygdala is dissociated depending on explicit and implicit threat processing. This dissociation, ascribed to their failure to compromise pre-existing hyperarousal, might contribute to anxiety in ASD.

show abstract

“…This is due to MMN being able to index the biological mechanisms that sit in the border between automatic and attention-dependent processes, which control the gateways to conscious perception and higher orders of memory 29 . Consequently, because of this ability to tap on to attentional processes and memory, it has been argued that emotional MMN (eMMN)-which is a MMN subtype that makes use of emotionally spoken syllables embedded in the auditory oddball paradigm as the deviant stimuli triggering the MMN 30 -can assess the automatic neural processing of emotional voices in as early as the pre-attentive stage 31,32 . Furthermore, a processing chain that proceeds from the primary auditory pathway to brain structures implicated in cognition and emotion-e.g., the, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, superior temporal gyrus and sulcus-as well as in the saliency network (insula), has been revealed 31,[33][34][35] .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An integrative analysis of 5HTT-mediated mechanism of hyperactivity to non-threatening voices

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The tonic model delineating the serotonin transporter polymorphism's (5-HTTLPR) modulatory effect on anxiety points towards a universal underlying mechanism involving a hyperor-elevated baseline level of arousal even to non-threatening stimuli. However, to our knowledge, this mechanism has never been observed in non-clinical cohorts exhibiting high anxiety. Moreover, empirical support regarding said association is mixed, potentially because of publication bias with a relatively small sample size. Hence, how the 5-HTTLPR modulates neural correlates remains controversial. Here we show that 5-HTTLPR short-allele carriers had significantly increased baseline ERPs and reduced fearful MMN, phenomena which can nevertheless be reversed by acute anxiolytic treatment. This provides evidence that the 5-HTT affects the automatic processing of threatening and non-threatening voices, impacts broadly on social cognition, and conclusively asserts the heightened baseline arousal level as the universal underlying neural mechanism for anxiety-related susceptibilities, functioning as a spectrum-like distribution from high trait anxiety non-patients to anxiety patients.

show abstract

Mismatch negativity (MMN) stands at the crossroads between explicit and implicit emotional processing

Cited by 25 publications

References 45 publications

Surprising Threats Accelerate Evidence Accumulation for Conscious Perception

Surprising Threats Accelerate Evidence Accumulation for Conscious Perception

Unmasking Anxiety in Autism: Explicit and Implicit Threatening Face Stimuli Dissociate Amygdala-centered Functional Connectivity

An integrative analysis of 5HTT-mediated mechanism of hyperactivity to non-threatening voices

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About