Neural mechanisms of affective matching across faces and scenes

Abstract

The emotional matching paradigm, introduced by Hariri and colleagues in 2000, is a widely used neuroimaging experiment that reliably activates the amygdala. In the classic version of the experiment faces with negative emotional expression and scenes depicting distressing events are compared with geometric shapes instead of neutral stimuli of the same category (i.e. faces or scenes). This makes it difficult to clearly attribute amygdala activation to the emotional valence and not to the social content. To improve this paradigm, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which emotionally neutral and, additionally, positive stimuli within each stimulus category (i.e. faces, social and non-social scenes) were included. These categories enabled us to differentiate the exact nature of observed effects in the amygdala. First, the main findings of the original paradigm were replicated. Second, we observed amygdala activation when comparing negative to neutral stimuli of the same category. However, for negative faces, the amygdala response habituated rapidly. Third, positive stimuli were associated with widespread activation including the insula and the caudate. This validated adaption study enables more precise statements on the neural activation underlying emotional processing. These advances may benefit future studies on identifying selective impairments in emotional and social stimulus processing.

Oxytocin attenuates neural response to emotional faces in social drinkers: an fMRI study

“…Current data also show that amygdala activation was near to zero during the shape-matching trials. This finding is in line with previous reports on the face-matching task and was expected, as the amygdala response should be specific to the emotional content of the stimulus and hence not generalize to the face-matching trials [26].…”

Decreased emotional reactivity after 3-month socio-affective but not attention- or meta-cognitive-based mental training: A randomized, controlled fMRI study

“…In addition, the cerebral response to negative vs. neutral stimuli involved activation of lateral prefrontal (IFG/AI), limbic (amygdala, subcortical nuclei) and parietal regions (SMG). This pattern of results is coherent with what has been observed in other studies on processing of negative emotion (Kragel and LaBar, 2016;Lindquist et al, 2012;Phan et al, 2002;Preckel et al, 2019) or empathy (Bzdok et al, 2012;Kanske et al, 2015;Lamm et al, 2011;Singer et al, 2004). The processing of positive vs. neutral stimuli further involved midline cortical structures (ventro-medial PFC, PCC), a set of brain areas that are known to be involved in self-referential processes.…”

“…Based on previous literature using similar tasks, we predicted that at baseline (i.e., before the mental training), participants would exhibit increased amygdala activity for emotional vs. neutral pictures (Ochsner et al, 2002;Phan et al, 2002;Phelps and LeDoux, 2005;Somerville et al, 2012). Processing of positive emotion would be also accompanied by increased activation of VS, NAcc and OFC areas, while processing of negative emotion would be associated with activation of the amygdala and lateral regions of the PFC (Kragel and LaBar, 2016;Lindquist et al, 2012;Phan et al, 2002;Preckel et al, 2019). We expected module specific effects on behaviour and brain function: Similar to previous MBI studies (Allen et al, 2012;Desbordes et al, 2012;Kral et al, 2018), the effect of the Presence module should be associated with an improvement of top-down emotional control, manifesting in decreased negative affective ratings and a modulation of the activation of prefronto-limbic regions; The effect of the Affect module should be similar to the one observed after training of lovingkindness or compassion meditation (Desbordes et al, 2012;Engen and Singer, 2015;Klimecki et al, 2014), i.e.…”

Foreign Language Processing Undermines Affect Labeling

“…2B). Previous research has shown that the amygdala habituates rapidly to negative stimuli in the affect labeling task (Preckel et al, 2019). One possible explanation for the higher amygdala activation in a foreign language is that foreign language processing interferes with the habituation of the amygdala.…”