Remembering the Object You Fear: Brain Potentials during Recognition of Spiders in Spider-Fearful Individuals

Michałowski, Jarosław M.; Weymar, Mathias; Hamm, Alfons O.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109537

“…Most likely, informative cues already triggered an emotion allowing participants to anticipate what they would experience in response to the target. This possibility accords with existing evidence on cued affective responding (Kolassa et al, 2005; Kopp and Altmann, 2005; Miltner et al, 2005; Michalowski et al, 2009, 2014) and on the relation between LPP amplitude and emotion (Yang et al, 2012; Herbert et al, 2013; Langeslag and van Strien, 2013; Sarlo et al, 2013; Galli et al, 2014). …”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Correspondingly, ERP studies found that affectively informative cues increase the LPP if they predict an emotional as compared to a neutral stimulus (Kolassa et al, 2005; Kopp and Altmann, 2005; Miltner et al, 2005; Michalowski et al, 2009, 2014). For example, in a study by Michalowski et al (2015), a colored fixation cross informed participants whether an upcoming picture would be neutral, unpleasant, or contained a spider.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Better Not to Know? Emotion Regulation Fails to Benefit from Affective Cueing

Liu

¹

,

Vanderhasselt

²

,

Zhou

³

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Often we know whether an upcoming event is going to be good or bad. But does that knowledge help us regulate ensuing emotions? To address this question, we exposed participants to alleged social feedback that was either positive or negative. On half the trials, a preceding cue indicated the feedback’s affective quality. On the remaining trials, the cue was uninformative. In two different blocks, participants either appraised feedback spontaneously or down-regulated ensuing emotions using a controlled appraisal strategy. Event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded throughout both blocks revealed an increased late positive potential (LPP) during cue and feedback epochs when cues were affectively informative as compared to uninformative. Additionally, during feedback epochs only, informative, but not uninformative, cueing was associated with an appraisal effect whereby controlled appraisal reduced the LPP relative to spontaneous appraisal for negative feedback. There was an opposite trend for positive feedback. Together, these results suggest that informative cues allowed individuals to anticipate an emotional response and to adjust emotion regulation. Overall, however, informative cues seemed to have prolonged and intensified emotional responding when compared with uninformative cues. Thus, affective cueing appears to be contraindicated when individuals aim to reduce their emotions.

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“…Patients with post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) exhibit attenuated P50 suppression to double‐click stimuli (reflecting sensory gating impairment) and exaggerated auditory and visual ERPs to simple, neutral stimuli (e.g., a tone), reflecting sensory cortical hyperactivity (Javanbakht, Liberzon, Amirsadri, Gjini, & Boutros, ; Lewine et al, ; Morgan & Grillon, ; Neylan et al, ; Skinner et al, ). Spider phobics demonstrate comparable exaggeration of visual ERPs (P1 and C1) to images of spiders and unrelated objects (Michalowski et al, ; Michalowski, Pane‐Farre, Low, & Hamm, ; Michalowski, Weymar, & Hamm, ). Of particular relevance here, besides aforementioned evidence of specific P1 enhancement to threatening faces, there is almost equally strong evidence of generic P1 enhancement to faces, regardless of facial expressions, in social anxiety (Helfinstein, White, Bar‐Haim, & Fox, ; Kolassa et al, ; Kolassa, Kolassa, Musial, & Miltner, ; Kolassa & Miltner, ; Muhlberger et al, ; Peschard, Philippot, Joassin, & Rossignol, ; Rossignol, Campanella, et al, ; Rossignol, Philippot, Bissot, Rigoulot, & Campanella, ; Wieser & Moscovitch, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impaired early visual categorization of fear in social anxiety

Meynadasy

¹

,

Clancy

²

,

Ke

³

et al. 2019

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Social anxiety is associated with biased social perception, especially of ambiguous cues. While aberrations in high‐level processes (e.g., cognitive appraisal and interpretation) have been implicated in such biases, contributions of early, low‐level stimulus processing remain unclear. Categorical perception represents an efficient process to resolve signal ambiguity, and categorical emotion perception can swiftly classify sensory input, “tagging” biologically important stimuli at early stages of processing to facilitate ecological response. However, early threat categorization could be disrupted by exaggerated (or disinhibited) threat processing in anxiety, resulting in biased perception of ambiguous signals. We tested this hypothesis among individuals with low and high trait social anxiety (LSA/HSA; defined relative to the current sample), who performed a two‐alternative forced‐choice (fear or neutral) task on facial expressions parametrically varied along a neutral‐fear continuum. The groups diverged in the reaction time (RT) profile along the neutral‐fear continuum, which was characteristic of categorical perception in the LSA (vs. HSA) group with drastically increased RT from neutral to intermediate (boundary) fear intensities, contrasting monotonic, nonsignificant RT changes in the HSA group. Neurometric analysis along the continuum identified an early neutral‐fear categorization operation (arising in the P1, an early visual ERP at 100 ms), which was nonetheless impaired in the HSA group (due to disinhibited response at the neutral‐fear boundary). Absent group differences in higher‐level cognitive operations (identified by later ERPs), current findings highlight a dispositional cognitive vulnerability in early visual categorization of social threat, which could precipitate further cognitive aberrations and, eventually, the onset of social anxiety disorder.

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“…Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) exhibit attenuated P50 suppression to double-click stimuli (reflecting sensory gating impairment) and exaggerated auditory and visual ERPs to simple, neutral stimuli (e.g., a tone); reflecting sensory cortical hyperactivity (Javanbakht, Liberzon, Amirsadri, Gjini, & Boutros, 2011;Lewine et al, 2002;Morgan & Grillon, 1999;Neylan et al, 1999;Skinner et al, 1999). Spider phobics demonstrate comparable exaggeration of visual ERPs (P1 and C1) to images of spiders and unrelated objects (Michalowski et al, 2009;Michalowski, Pane-Farre, Low, & Hamm, 2015;Michalowski, Weymar, & Hamm, 2014). Of particular relevance here, besides aforementioned evidence of specific P1 enhancement to threatening faces, there is almost equally strong evidence of generic P1 enhancement to faces, regardless of facial expressions, in social anxiety (Helfinstein, White, Bar-Haim, & Fox, 2008;Kolassa et al, 2009;Kolassa, Kolassa, Musial, & Miltner, 2007;Kolassa & Miltner, 2006;Muhlberger et al, 2009;Peschard, Philippot, Joassin, & Rossignol, 2013;Rossignol, Philippot, Bissot, Rigoulot, & Campanella, 2012;Wieser & Moscovitch, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impaired early visual categorization of fear in social anxiety

Meynadasy

¹

,

Clancy

²

,

Simon

³

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social anxiety is associated with biased social perception, especially of ambiguous cues. While aberrations in high‐level processes (e.g., cognitive appraisal and interpretation) have been implicated in such biases, contributions of early, low‐level stimulus processing remain unclear. Categorical perception represents an efficient process to resolve signal ambiguity, and categorical emotion perception can swiftly classify sensory input, “tagging” biologically important stimuli at early stages of processing to facilitate ecological response. However, early threat categorization could be disrupted by exaggerated (or disinhibited) threat processing in anxiety, resulting in biased perception of ambiguous signals. We tested this hypothesis among individuals with low and high trait social anxiety (LSA/HSA; defined relative to the current sample), who performed a two‐alternative forced‐choice (fear or neutral) task on facial expressions parametrically varied along a neutral‐fear continuum. The groups diverged in the reaction time (RT) profile along the neutral‐fear continuum, which was characteristic of categorical perception in the LSA (vs. HSA) group with drastically increased RT from neutral to intermediate (boundary) fear intensities, contrasting monotonic, nonsignificant RT changes in the HSA group. Neurometric analysis along the continuum identified an early neutral‐fear categorization operation (arising in the P1, an early visual ERP at 100 ms), which was nonetheless impaired in the HSA group (due to disinhibited response at the neutral‐fear boundary). Absent group differences in higher‐level cognitive operations (identified by later ERPs), current findings highlight a dispositional cognitive vulnerability in early visual categorization of social threat, which could precipitate further cognitive aberrations and, eventually, the onset of social anxiety disorder.

show abstract

Remembering the Object You Fear: Brain Potentials during Recognition of Spiders in Spider-Fearful Individuals

Cited by 10 publications

References 70 publications

Better Not to Know? Emotion Regulation Fails to Benefit from Affective Cueing

Better Not to Know? Emotion Regulation Fails to Benefit from Affective Cueing

Impaired early visual categorization of fear in social anxiety

Impaired early visual categorization of fear in social anxiety

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