Postauricular and superior auricular reflex modulation during emotional pictures and sounds

Benning, Stephen D.

doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2010.01071.x

Cited by 22 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The postauricular reflex was indeed specifically potentiated in response to the CS+ compared with the CS− during acquisition, thereby reflecting appetitive learning at the psychophysiological level. This effect is consistent with prior findings that showed a greater postauricular reflex magnitude during presentation of pleasant/appetitive stimuli relative to neutral or unpleasant/aversive stimuli (Aaron & Benning, 2016; Benning, 2011; Benning et al, 2004; Dichter et al, 2010; Gable & Harmon‐Jones, 2009; Hackley et al, 2009; Hess et al, 2007; Johnson et al, 2012; Sandt et al, 2009), and does not seem to have been related to participants' subjective hunger level. During the extinction phase, the postauricular reflex magnitude was no longer potentiated to the CS+ in comparison with the CS−, which suggests that its potentiation to the CS+ was conditioned to the pleasant odor delivery.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Measuring Pavlovian appetitive conditioning in humans with the postauricular reflex

et al. 2018

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Despite its evolutionary and clinical significance, appetitive conditioning has been rarely investigated in humans. It has been proposed that this discrepancy might stem from the difficulty in finding suitable appetitive stimuli that elicit strong physiological responses. However, this might also be due to a possible lack of sensitivity of the psychophysiological measures commonly used to index human appetitive conditioning. Here, we investigated whether the postauricular reflex—a vestigial muscle microreflex that is potentiated by pleasant stimuli relative to neutral and unpleasant stimuli—may provide a valid psychophysiological indicator of appetitive conditioning in humans. To this end, we used a delay differential appetitive conditioning procedure, in which a neutral stimulus was contingently paired with a pleasant odor (CS+), while another neutral stimulus was not associated with any odor (CS−). We measured the postauricular reflex, the startle eyeblink reflex, and skin conductance response (SCR) as learning indices. Taken together, our results indicate that the postauricular reflex was potentiated in response to the CS+ compared with the CS−, whereas this potentiation extinguished when the pleasant odor was no longer delivered. In contrast, we found no evidence for startle eyeblink reflex attenuation in response to the CS+ relative to the CS−, and no effect of appetitive conditioning was observed on SCR. These findings suggest that the postauricular reflex is a sensitive measure of human appetitive conditioning and constitutes a valuable tool for further shedding light on the basic mechanisms underlying emotional learning in humans.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Measuring Pavlovian appetitive conditioning in humans with the postauricular reflex

et al. 2018

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“…Probe-and click-elicited postauricular reflexes were not correlated during adventure scenes, indicating that these scenes do not assess the same sort of positive emotion as other picture contents. This is consistent with other studies reporting that adventure scenes do not modulate postauricular reflexes (Benning, 2011;Quevedo et al, 2009;Sandt et al, 2009;cf. Quevedo et al, 2015).…”

Section: Comparability Of Postauricular Reflexes Elicited By Clicks Asupporting

confidence: 93%

“…). The postauricular reflex is also potentiated (larger) during pleasant versus neutral or aversive emotional sounds (Benning, 2011), suggesting that the reflex measures positive emotion across sensory modalities.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Postauricular reflexes elicited by soft acoustic clicks and loud noise probes: Reliability, prepulse facilitation, and sensitivity to picture contents

Aaron

Benning

2016

Psychophysiology

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The startle blink reflex is facilitated during early picture viewing, then inhibited by attention during pleasant and aversive pictures compared to neutral pictures, and finally potentiated during aversive pictures specifically. However, it is unclear whether the postauricular reflex, which is elicited by the same loud acoustic probe as the startle blink reflex but enhanced by appetitive instead of defensive emotion, has the same pattern and time course of emotional modulation. We examined this issue in a sample of 90 undergraduates using serially presented soft acoustic clicks that elicited postauricular (but not startle blink) reflexes in addition to standard startle probes. Postauricular reflexes elicited by both clicks and probes correlated during food and nurturant contents, during which they were potentiated compared to neutral pictures, suggesting clicks effectively elicit emotionally modulated postauricular reflexes. The postauricular reflex was initially facilitated during the first 500 ms of picture processing but was larger during pleasant than neutral pictures throughout picture processing, with larger effect sizes during the latter half of picture processing. Across reflexes and eliciting stimuli, measures of emotional modulation had higher coefficient alphas than magnitudes during specific picture contents within each valence, indicating that only emotional modulation measures assess higher-order appetitive or defensive processing.

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“…One was a study of voluntary ear wiggling, smiling, yawning, and other facial gestures (Berzin & Fortinguerra, 1993). The second concerned modulation of PAR amplitude by emotion-inducing photographs and sounds (Benning, 2011).…”

Section: Concluding Commentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for a vestigial pinna‐orienting system in humans

Hackley

2015

Psychophysiology

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Although some people can voluntarily move their ears, overt reflexive control of the pinnae has been lost during the course of primate evolution. Humans and apes do not move their ears to express emotion, they do not defensively retract them when startled, and they do not point them at novel, salient, or task-relevant stimuli. Nevertheless, it is the thesis of this review that neural circuits for pinna orienting have survived in a purely vestigial state for over 25 million years. There are three lines of evidence: (1) Shifting the eyes hard to one side is accompanied by electromyographic (EMG) activity in certain ear muscles and by a barely visible (2-3 mm) curling of the dorsal edge of the pinna. (2) The capture of attention by a novel, unexpected sound emanating from behind and to one side has been found to trigger a weak EMG response in the muscle behind the corresponding ear. (3) Reflexive EMG bursts recorded during a selective attention task suggested that subjects were unconsciously attempting to orient their ears toward the relevant sounds. In addition to pinna orienting, the possibility that pinna startle might have survived in a vestigial state is also considered. It is suggested that the postauricular reflex to sudden, intense sounds constitutes a vestigial startle response, but that the reflex arc is dominated by a pathway that bypasses the main organizing center for startle.

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Postauricular and superior auricular reflex modulation during emotional pictures and sounds

Cited by 22 publications

References 22 publications

Measuring Pavlovian appetitive conditioning in humans with the postauricular reflex

Measuring Pavlovian appetitive conditioning in humans with the postauricular reflex

Postauricular reflexes elicited by soft acoustic clicks and loud noise probes: Reliability, prepulse facilitation, and sensitivity to picture contents

Evidence for a vestigial pinna‐orienting system in humans

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