Neural processing of emotional facial stimuli in specific phobia: An fMRI study

Böhnlein, Joscha; Leehr, Elisabeth J.; Roesmann, Kati; Sappelt, Teresa; Platte, Ole; Grotegerd, Dominik; Sindermann, Lisa; Repple, Jonathan; Meinert, Susanne; Lemke, Hannah; Borgers, Tiana; Dohm, Katharina; Enneking, Verena; Goltermann, Janik; Waltemate, Lena; Hülsmann, Carina; Thiel, Katharina; Winter, Nils R.; Bauer, Jochen; Lueken, Ulrike; Straube, Thomas; Junghöfer, Markus; Dannlowski, Udo

doi:10.1002/da.23191

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…Fear-driven behaviors are displayed by various mammalian species and are crucial for survival and adapting to an uncertain environment. Dysregulation of fear processing brain regions is associated with mental disorders such as anxiety and phobias [ 34–36 ]. While the prelimbic and infralimbic regions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex have been extensively studied in the context of conditioned fear, the brain regions that regulate innate fear responses (more specifically, to predator odor) remains poorly understood.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paternal early life stress exerts intergenerational effects on male C57Bl/6J offspring risk-taking behaviors and predator scent-induced c-Fos expression

Thivisol

et al. 2023

Neuronal Signaling

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Paternal preconceptional health factors, such as exposures to stress, diet and exercise, have been found to significantly influence offspring phenotypes in a range of animal models. Preclinical studies have provided evidence that paternal stress is associated with increased stress responsivity and anxiety-related traits, particularly in male offspring. It was previously reported that a paternal history of maternal separation (MS) led to male offspring (PatMS) displaying reduced cautious behavior during exploration of a novel environment. The neural basis for that absence of behavioral moderation is unclear. Here, we investigated the adaptive behavioral responses of control and PatMS male offspring in the predator odour risk-assessment task (PORT). PatMS mice failed to moderate their behaviors in the presence of a predator odour trimethylthiazoline (TMT). c-Fos mapping revealed reduced cellular activation in fear-regulating brain regions of PatMS mice, such as in the cingulate cortex, dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, and the basolateral amygdala. Expression of the paternally imprinted gene Grb10 (previously identified as a key molecular regulator of risk-taking behavior) was unaltered in PatMS mice. However, other paternal imprinted genes such as Igf2 and PEG3 were differentially expressed in PatMS mice. Overall, our study provides the first evidence of an intergenerational influence of preconceptional paternal stress exposure on offspring brain function relevant to risk-taking behavior, which is also independent of Grb10 gene expression.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paternal early life stress exerts intergenerational effects on male C57Bl/6J offspring risk-taking behaviors and predator scent-induced c-Fos expression

Thivisol

et al. 2023

Neuronal Signaling

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“…It includes a sample of untreated patients with spider phobia according to DSM-IV criteria [25] aged 18-65 without major comorbidities (low to moderate depression was tolerated unless currently treated, as well as other animal phobias) and with a total Spider Phobia Questionnaire (SPQ) [26] score > 19 (clinical cut-off). See [27] for a complete study description and [10,[28][29][30][31] for other studies using the SPIDER-VR data. Bicentric recruitment was conducted in Würzburg (WÜ) and Münster (MS), Germany.…”

Section: Dataset and Sample Description The Bicentric Clinical Study ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual-Level Prediction of Exposure Therapy Outcome Using Structural and Functional MRI Data in Spider Phobia: A Machine-Learning Study

Chavanne,

Meinke,

Langhammer

et al. 2023

Depression and Anxiety

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Machine-learning prediction studies have shown potential to inform treatment stratification, but recent efforts to predict psychotherapy outcomes with clinical routine data have only resulted in moderate prediction accuracies. Neuroimaging data showed promise to predict treatment outcome, but previous prediction attempts have been exploratory and reported small clinical sample sizes. Herein, we aimed to examine the incremental predictive value of neuroimaging data in contrast to clinical and demographic data alone (for which results were previously published), using a two-level multimodal ensemble machine-learning strategy. We used pretreatment structural and task-based fMRI data to predict virtual reality exposure therapy outcome in a bicentric sample of N = 190 patients with spider phobia. First, eight 1st-level random forest classifications were conducted using separate data modalities (clinical questionnaire scores and sociodemographic data, cortical thickness and gray matter volumes, functional activation, connectivity, connectivity-derived graph metrics, and BOLD signal variance). Then, the resulting predictions were used to train a 2nd-level classifier that produced a final prediction. No 1st-level or 2nd-level classifier performed above chance level except BOLD signal variance, which showed potential as a contributor to higher-level prediction from multiple regions across the brain (1st-level balanced accuracy = 0.63 ). Overall, neuroimaging data did not provide any incremental accuracy for treatment outcome prediction in patients with spider phobia with respect to clinical and sociodemographic data alone. Thus, we advise caution in the interpretation of prediction performances from small-scale, single-site patient samples. Larger multimodal datasets are needed to further investigate individual-level neuroimaging predictors of therapy response in anxiety disorders.

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“…Spider stimuli are rapidly detected in a matrix of benign distractors by adults and children (LoBue, 2010;, and they are detected even when presented subliminally (Öhman & Soares, 1994) or irrelevant to task goals (New & German, 2015). They elicit greater fixations (Devue et al, 2011;LoBue et al, 2014), heart rate changes (Flykt et al, 2012), sensory cortical (Kopp & Altmann, 2005) and amygdala activity (Mobbs et al, 2010) than neutral stimuli, an effect that is pronounced in individuals with greater fear of spiders (Böhnlein et al, 2021;Michalowski et al, 2015;Siminski et al, 2021). Finally, infants with little exposure to spiders look at them preferentially (Rakison & Derringer, 2008) and with increased pupil dilation (Hoehl et al, 2017).…”

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confidence: 99%

Perceptual decision-making regarding phylogenetically salient stimuli

Ozturk,

Sussman,

Jin

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Phylogenetically salient stimuli such as spiders are commonly reported threats in the general population and the most common object of specific phobias in clinical populations. Several theories have hypothesized that our perceptual systems prioritize such stimuli in an “automatic” or “bottom-up” manner due to their evolutionary salience. However, empirical research on perceptual processing of these stimuli as well as the influence of “top-down” goal-driven and bottom-up stimulus-driven factors is lacking. Here, we used perceptual psychophysics to determine absolute perceptual thresholds for detection of spider and crab images. Subsequently, participants used spider and crab cues (that imposed a top-down perceptual set) to detect spiders and crab images presented at their predetermined perceptual threshold in a two-alternative forced-choice perceptual decision making task. While spiders were detected at lower perceptual thresholds than crabs, they were not immune to top-down influence. Indeed, compared to top-down crab cues, spider cues improved the speed and accuracy of detection of spiders vs crabs. Using a hierarchical drift diffusion model, we found that spider cues biased decision-making not only by shifting the starting point of evidence accumulation towards the spider decision, but also by increasing the efficiency with which sensory evidence accumulated, more so for spider than crab perceptual decisions. Overall, these findings provide evidence for perceptual prioritization of phylogenetically salient stimuli and highlight the computational mechanisms by which this prioritization is facilitated by bottom-up and top-down factors.

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Neural processing of emotional facial stimuli in specific phobia: An fMRI study

Cited by 7 publications

References 74 publications

Paternal early life stress exerts intergenerational effects on male C57Bl/6J offspring risk-taking behaviors and predator scent-induced c-Fos expression

Paternal early life stress exerts intergenerational effects on male C57Bl/6J offspring risk-taking behaviors and predator scent-induced c-Fos expression

Individual-Level Prediction of Exposure Therapy Outcome Using Structural and Functional MRI Data in Spider Phobia: A Machine-Learning Study

Perceptual decision-making regarding phylogenetically salient stimuli

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