Self-relevant threat contexts enhance early processing of fear-conditioned faces

Muench, Hannah M.; Pizzagalli, Diego A.; Hofmann, Stefan G.; Mueller, Erik M.

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.07.017

Cited by 19 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…The present effects converge with previously shown alpha suppression to naturally threatening stimuli 14,26,27 and can be interpreted as stronger disinhibition of early visuocortical areas facilitating attentional prioritization of behaviourally more relevant (i.e., threat) cues 23,25 . They are also consistent with previous ERP research showing threat-related prioritization of visuocortical processing 7–12,30,31 . Prioritization of threat is highly important for the successful choice of adaptive responding 6,32 , given limited capacities for information processing in the brain 33,34 .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Among these, increased attentive processing promotes capture of threat-relevant information, improving chances of successful defensive responding 6 . Supporting this notion, studies using visual evoked brain potentials in humans have found selectively heightened visual attention when viewing threat cues 7–12 . However, because visual evoked potentials to threat generally reflect early brain activity (i.e., <500 ms) 13 , it is unknown whether enhanced visual attention is sustained throughout later visual processing stages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

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Extinction-resistant attention to long-term conditioned threat is indexed by selective visuocortical alpha suppression in humans

Panitz

Keil

Mueller

2019

Sci Rep

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Previous electrophysiological studies in humans have shown rapid modulations of visual attention after conditioned threat vs. safety cues (<500 ms post-stimulus), but it is unknown whether this attentional prioritization is sustained throughout later time windows and whether it is robust to extinction. To investigate sustained visual attention, we assessed visuocortical alpha suppression in response to conditioned and extinguished threat. We reanalysed data from N = 87 male participants that had shown successful long-term threat conditioning and extinction in self reports and physiological measures in a two-day conditioning paradigm. The current EEG time-frequency analyses on recall test data on Day 2 revealed that previously threat-conditioned vs. safety cues evoked stronger occipital alpha power suppression from 600 to 1200 ms. Notably, this suppression was resistant to previous extinction. The present study showed for the first time that threat conditioning enhances sustained modulation of visuocortical attention to threat in the long term. Long-term stability and extinction resistance of alpha suppression suggest a crucial role of visuocortical attention mechanisms in the maintenance of learned fears.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Extinction-resistant attention to long-term conditioned threat is indexed by selective visuocortical alpha suppression in humans

Panitz

Keil

Mueller

2019

Sci Rep

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“…Thus, the present effects could have been even larger when using a delayed contextual fear conditioning procedure. Third, with regard to the subjective ratings, the perceived threat of the context only differed before but not after the contextualized faces phase presumably due to within‐session fear extinction (Milad & Quirk, ; Mueller et al, ; Muench et al, ), which may have weakened the observed effects of context. This could also explain the absent modulation of the face ratings by contexts, as has been demonstrated in studies which used a different contextualized faces paradigm (Wieser et al, ; Wieser & Moscovitch, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, threatening versus happy and neutral contexts, operationalized as affective visual scenes around faces, increased the amplitudes of the face‐sensitive N170 (Righart & de Gelder, ), suggesting a more effective face structure encoding in threat contexts. In another paradigm, self‐ versus other‐related threatening imaginations enhanced the amplitudes of the P100 to subsequently presented angry faces (Muench, Westermann, Pizzagalli, Hofmann, & Mueller, ). It has further been demonstrated that the late positive potential (LPP) is enhanced in response to faces that follow self‐ versus other‐related (McCrackin & Itier, ; Wieser et al, ) as well as negative versus positive/neutral labels (Wieser & Moscovitch, ; Xu, Li, Diao, Fan, & Yang, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Threat‐conditioned contexts modulate the late positive potential to faces—A mobile EEG/virtual reality study

2018

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In everyday life, the motivational value of faces is bound to the contexts in which faces are perceived. Electrophysiological studies have demonstrated that inherent negatively valent contexts modulate cortical face processing as assessed with ERP components. However, it is not well understood whether learned (rather than inherent) and three‐dimensional aversive contexts similarly modulate the neural processing of faces. Using full immersive virtual reality (VR) and mobile EEG techniques, 25 participants underwent a differential fear conditioning paradigm, in which one virtual room was paired with an aversive noise burst (threat context) and another with a nonaversive noise burst (safe context). Subsequently, avatars with neutral or angry facial expressions were presented in the threat and safe contexts while EEG was recorded. Analysis of the late positive potential (LPP), which presumably indicates motivational salience, revealed a significant interaction of context (threat vs. safe) and face type (neutral vs. angry). Neutral faces evoked increased LPP amplitudes in threat versus safe contexts, while angry faces evoked increased early LPP amplitudes regardless of context. In addition to indicating that threat‐conditioned contexts alter the processing of ambiguous faces, the present study demonstrates the successful integration of EEG and VR with particular relevance for affective neuroscience research.

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“…Significant ERP CR can appear as early as 55 ms after CS presentation (Stolarova, Keil, & Moratti, ). Aversive conditioning was also found to induce early changes in visual and auditory P1 (Kluge et al, ; Muench, Westermann, Pizzagalli, Hofmann, & Mueller, ), in visual and auditory N1/P2 components (Bröckelmann et al, ; Kluge et al, ), as well as in P3 (Baas et al, ; Christoffersen et al, ; Franken et al, ; Wong et al, ) and the LPP (Bacigalupo & Luck, ; Wong et al, ) in visual paradigms. Miskovic and Keil () argued that occurrence of the early effects originating in the primary sensory cortex is related to the number of CS‐US pairings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Classical conditioning in oddball paradigm: A comparison between aversive and name conditioning

Pavlov

Kotchoubey

2019

Psychophysiology

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The nature of cortical plasticity in learning is one of the most intriguing questions of modern cognitive neuroscience. Classical conditioning (as a typical case of associative learning) and electroencephalography together provide a good framework for expanding our knowledge about fast learning‐related cortical changes. In our experiment, we employed a novel paradigm in which classical conditioning was combined with passive oddball. Nineteen subjects participated in the first experiment (aversive conditioning with painful shock as unconditioned stimulus (US) and neutral tones as conditioned stimulus (CS)), and 22 subjects in the second experiment (with a subject’s own name as US). We used event‐related potentials (ERPs) and time‐frequency analyses to explore the CS‐US interaction. We found a learning‐induced increment of P3a in the first experiment and the late positive potential (LPP) in both experiments. These effects may be related to increased attentional and emotional significance of conditioned stimuli. We showed that the LPP and P3a effects, earlier found only in visual paradigms, generalize to the auditory sensory system. We also observed suppression of the low beta activity to CS+ in aversive conditioning over the hemisphere contralateral to expected electrical shocks, presumably indicating preparation of the somatosensory system to the expected nociceptive US.

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Self-relevant threat contexts enhance early processing of fear-conditioned faces

Cited by 19 publications

References 57 publications

Extinction-resistant attention to long-term conditioned threat is indexed by selective visuocortical alpha suppression in humans

Extinction-resistant attention to long-term conditioned threat is indexed by selective visuocortical alpha suppression in humans

Threat‐conditioned contexts modulate the late positive potential to faces—A mobile EEG/virtual reality study

Classical conditioning in oddball paradigm: A comparison between aversive and name conditioning

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