The mere sight of loved ones does not inhibit psychophysiological defense mechanisms when threatened

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.Looking at pictures of loved ones, such as one’s romantic partner or good friends, has been shown to alleviate the experience of pain and reduce defensive reactions. However, little is known about such modulatory effects on threat and safety learning and the psychophysiological processes involved. Here, we explored the hypothesis that beloved faces serve as implicit safety cues and attenuate the expression of fear responses and/or accelerate extinction learning in a threatening context. Thirtytwo participants viewed pictures of their loved ones (romantic partner, parents, and best friend) as well as of unknown individuals within contextual background colors indicating threat-of-shock or safety. Focusing on the extinction of non-reinforced threat associations (no shocks were given), the experiment was repeated on two more test days while the defensive startle-EMG, SCR, and threat ratings were obtained. Results confirmed pronounced defensive responding to instructed threatof- shock relative to safety context (e.g., threat-enhanced startle reflex and SCR). Moreover, threatpotentiated startle response slowly declined across test days indicating passive extinction learning in the absence of shocks. Importantly, neither a main effect of face category (loved vs. unknown) nor a significant interaction with threat/safety instructions was observed. Thus, a long-term learning history of beneficial relations (e.g., with supportive parents) did not interfere with verbal threat learning and aversive apprehensions. These findings reflect the effects of worries and apprehensions that persist despite the repeated experience of safety and the pictorial presence of loved ones. How to counter such aversive expectations is key to changing mal-adaptive behaviors (e.g., avoidance or stockpiling), biased risk perceptions, and stereotypes.Projekt DEA

Contextual information resolves uncertainty about ambiguous facial emotions: Behavioral and magnetoencephalographic correlates

We are grateful to Karin Wilken for her assistance in data collection.Environmental conditions bias our perception of other peoples’ facial emotions. This becomes quite relevant in potentially threatening situations, when a fellow’s facial expression might indicate potential danger. The present study tested the prediction that a threatening environment biases the recognition of facial emotions. To this end, low- and medium-expressive happy and fearful faces (morphed to 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40% emotional) were presented within a context of instructed threat-of-shock or safety. Self-reported data revealed that instructed threat led to a biased recognition of fearful, but not happy facial expressions. Magnetoencephalographic correlates revealed spatio-temporal clusters of neural network activity associated with emotion recognition and contextual threat/safety in early to mid-latency time intervals in the left parietal cortex, bilateral prefrontal cortex, and the left temporal pole regions. Early parietal activity revealed a double dissociation of face–context information as a function of the expressive level of facial emotions: When facial expressions were difficult to recognize (lowexpressive), contextual threat enhanced fear processing and contextual safety enhanced processing of subtle happy faces. However, for rather easily recognizable faces (medium-expressive) the left hemisphere (parietal cortex, PFC, and temporal pole) showed enhanced activity to happy faces during contextual threat and fearful faces during safety. Thus, contextual settings reduce the salience threshold and boost early face processing of lowexpressive congruent facial emotions, whereas face-context incongruity or mismatch effects drive neural activity of easier recognizable facial emotions. These results elucidate how environmental settings help recognize facial emotions, and the brain mechanisms underlying the recognition of subtle nuances of fear.German Research Foundation (DFG) BU 3255/1-1 Ju2/024/15 SF58C0

Verbal threat learning does not spare loved ones

This research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) Grant to Florian Bublatzky (BU 3255/1-1 and 1-2).Significant others provide individuals with a sense of safety and security. However, the mechanisms that underlie attachment-induced safety are hardly understood. Recent research has shown beneficial effects when viewing pictures of the romantic partner, leading to reduced pain experience and defensive responding. Building upon this, we examined the inhibitory capacity of loved face pictures on fear learning in an instructed threat paradigm. Pictures of loved familiar or unknown individuals served as signals for either threat of electric shocks or safety, while a broad set of psychophysiological measures was recorded. We assumed that a long-term learning history of beneficial relations interferes with social threat learning. Nevertheless, results yielded a typical pattern of physiological defense activation towards threat cues, regardless of whether threat was signaled by an unknown or a loved face. These findings call into question the notion that pictures of loved individuals are shielded against becoming threat cues, with implications for attachment and trauma research.German Research Foundation (DFG) BU 3255/1-1 BU 3255/1-

Verbal instructions override the meaning of facial expressions

Psychological research has long acknowledged that facial expressions can implicitly trigger affective psychophysiological responses. However, whether verbal information can alter the meaning of facial emotions and corresponding response patterns has not been tested. This study examined emotional facial expressions as cues for instructed threat-of-shock or safety, with a focus on defensive responding. In addition, reversal instructions were introduced to test the impact of explicit safety instructions on fear extinction. Forty participants were instructed that they would receive unpleasant electric shocks, for instance, when viewing happy but not angry faces. In a second block, instructions were reversed (e.g., now angry faces cued shock). Happy, neutral, and angry faces were repeatedly presented, and auditory startle probes were delivered in half of the trials. The defensive startle reflex was potentiated for threat compared to safety cues. Importantly, this effect occurred regardless of whether threat was cued by happy or angry expressions. Although the typical pattern of response habituation was observed, defense activation to newly instructed threat cues remained significantly enhanced in the second part of the experiment, and it was more pronounced in more socially anxious participants. Thus, anxious individuals did not exhibit more pronounced defense activation compared to less anxious participants, but their defense activation was more persistent

Explicit attention interferes with selective emotion processing in human extrastriate cortex

BACKGROUND: Brain imaging and event-related potential studies provide strong evidence that emotional stimuli guide selective attention in visual processing. A reflection of the emotional attention capture is the increased Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) for pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral images (~150–300 ms poststimulus). The present study explored whether this early emotion discrimination reflects an automatic phenomenon or is subject to interference by competing processing demands. Thus, emotional processing was assessed while participants performed a concurrent feature-based attention task varying in processing demands. RESULTS: Participants successfully performed the primary visual attention task as revealed by behavioral performance and selected event-related potential components (Selection Negativity and P3b). Replicating previous results, emotional modulation of the EPN was observed in a task condition with low processing demands. In contrast, pleasant and unpleasant pictures failed to elicit increased EPN amplitudes compared to neutral images in more difficult explicit attention task conditions. Further analyses determined that even the processing of pleasant and unpleasant pictures high in emotional arousal is subject to interference in experimental conditions with high task demand. Taken together, performing demanding feature-based counting tasks interfered with differential emotion processing indexed by the EPN. CONCLUSION: The present findings demonstrate that taxing processing resources by a competing primary visual attention task markedly attenuated the early discrimination of emotional from neutral picture contents. Thus, these results provide further empirical support for an interference account of the emotion-attention interaction under conditions of competition. Previous studies revealed the interference of selective emotion processing when attentional resources were directed to locations of explicitly task-relevant stimuli. The present data suggest that interference of emotion processing by competing task demands is a more general phenomenon extending to the domain of feature-based attention. Furthermore, the results are inconsistent with the notion of effortlessness, i.e., early emotion discrimination despite concurrent task demands. These findings implicate to assess the presumed automatic nature of emotion processing at the level of specific aspects rather than considering automaticity as an all-or-none phenomenon

Effekte von Erwartungsangst auf die Verarbeitung visueller Umweltreize

Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht den Einfluss von Erwartungsangst auf emotionale Verarbeitungs- und Reaktionsprozesse. Zu diesem Zweck wurden zwei etablierte Forschungslinien integriert: Das "Bildbetrachtungs- und das "verbal instruierte Bedrohungsparadigma" (Threat-of-shock). Die Darbietung von Bildern unterschiedlicher Valenz und Erregung geht mit Veränderungen der Wahrnehmung sowie spezifischen physiologischen und Verhaltensprozessen einher. Von einer evolutionären Perspektive ausgehend wird angenommen, dass entwicklungsgeschichtlich alte motivationale Annäherungs- und Vermeidungssysteme selektiv die Verarbeitung bedeutsamer Umweltinformationen fördern und entsprechende physiologische Systeme zur Ausübung situationsadäquater Reaktionen vorbereiten. Um eine dynamische Anpassungen an phylogenetisch und ontogenetisch grundlegende Ziele zu ermöglichen, können Zusammenhänge zwischen Hinweisreizen und potentieller Gefahr leicht erlernt werden. In diesem Kontext konnte mit Hilfe des instruierten Bedrohungsparadigmas gezeigt werden, dass motivationale Systeme durch verbale Instruktionen über aversive Umweltzusammenhänge moduliert werden. In anderen Worten, die rein verbale Ankündigung drohender Gefahr ist ausreichend um Erwartungsangst auszulösen.Bezüglich des Einflusses von Erwartungsangst auf emotionale Wahrnehmungs- und Reaktionsprozesse ist wenig bekannt. Um dieser Fragestellung nachgehen zu können, wurden zwei wesentliche Aspekte variiert: (1) Der Vorhersagewert der Bildmaterialien bezüglich der Bedrohung (Bilder waren entweder irrelevant oder prädiktiv für Schockgefahr) und (2) die fokussierte Verarbeitungsebene (Messung perzeptuell-evaluativer und physiologisch-motorischen Verarbeitungsprozesse).Studie I untersuchte den Einfluss von kontextuellen Bedrohungssignalen auf physiologische Reaktionen (Schreckreflex, Hautleitfähigkeit) beim Betrachten bedrohungsirrelevanter Bildern. Zu diesem Zweck wurden angenehme, neutrale und unangenehme Bilder während lang anhaltender Bedrohungs- und Sicherheitsbedingungen dargeboten. Frühere Befunde zur Modulation des Schreckreflexes durch den emotionalen Bildgehalt und der instruierten Bedrohung wurden repliziert. Von besonderem Interesse ist, dass trotz einer generellen Potenzierung defensiver Schutzreflexe unter Bedrohungsbedingungen der Schreckreflex sensitiv für die hedonische Valenz der Bildinhalte war. Die Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass motivationale Systeme durch die Betrachtung von Bildern und anhaltenden aversiven Erwartungsprozessen unabhängig moduliert werden können.In einem ähnlichen Experimentaldesign untersuchte Studie II den gemeinsamen Einfluss von Erwartungsangst und emotionaler Bildverarbeitung auf perzeptuelle und Aufmerksamkeitsprozesse mit Hilfe von ereigniskorrelierten Hirnpotentialen (EKP). Die Resultate zeigten speziell für angenehme Bilder eine lang anhaltende Negativierung über visuellen Verarbeitungsarealen unter Schockgefahr im Vergleich zur Sicherheitsbedingung. Dieser valenzspezifische Befund wird als verstärkte Aufmerksamkeitslenkung und Verarbeitung von situations-inkongruenten Reizen interpretiert. Darüber hinaus wurden emotionsspezifische EKP Komponenten ( early posterior negativity, EPN und late positive potential, LPP ) unter beiden Bedingungen repliziert.Aufbauend auf diesen Befunden, wurde in Studie III die perzeptuelle Verarbeitung von Bildmaterialien untersucht, die explizit als Prädiktor für elektrische Schocks instruiert wurden. Zu diesem Zweck wurde in verschiedenen Durchgängen der implizit emotionale Bedeutungsgehalt der Bildkategorien jeweils als Schockhinweis-, Sicherheits- und Kontrollreize verbal moduliert. Das Betrachten von Bildern unter möglicher Schockgefahr war mit frühen Effekten einer erhöhten P1-Komponente assoziiert, die als unspezifisch erhöhte Vigilanz in Gefahrensituationen interpretiert wurde. Darauffolgende Verarbeitungsstufen (P2- und LPP Komponente) differenzierten zunehmend akkurat zwischen Schock- und Sicherheitssignalen sowie Bildverarbeitung unter Kontrollbedingungen. In Abhängigkeit des prädiktiven Gehaltes und der abgelaufenen Verarbeitungszeit, erlangen Prozesse der sensorischen Aufnahme und Reizevaluation zunehmend genauere Informationen über Umweltbedingungen.Zusammenfassend zeigt die vorliegende Arbeit den wechselseitigen Einfluss von Erwartungsangst und emotionalen Verarbeitungsprozessen. Hauptbefunde des Bildbetrachtungs- und instruierten Bedrohungsparadimas wurden repliziert. Bezüglich der Interaktion von emotionalen und aversiven Erwartungsprozessen, zeigten sich valenz-spezifische und valenz-unabhängige Ergebnismuster in Abhängigkeit der Vorhersagekraft (distinkter Schockhinweisreiz vs. kontextuelle Bedrohungssignale) und der Messebene (perzeptuell-evaluativ vs. motorisch-behavioral). Insgesamt werden Prozesse der Informationsverarbeitung und physiologischer Reaktionsvorbereitung dynamisch an wechselnde Umweltbegebenheiten angepasst und durch aversive Erwartungsprozesse moduliert

DATA: Watch out, he´s dangerous! Electrocortical indicators of selective visual attention to allegedly threatening persons

Experimental files and aggregated data and statistic

Individual participant behavioral raw data

Original behavioral dat

The effect of emotion regulation and impulsivity on reversal learning

To investigate the influence of emotion regulation and impulsivity measures on instrumental reversal learning in patients with borderline-personality disorder and healthy control