Association of attention and memory biases for negative stimuli with post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms

Cognitive models have highlighted attentional and memory biases to negatively valenced emotional stimuli, and their association, in the development and maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, research has focused mainly on attentional biases towards distracting (not task-relevant) negative stimuli and the links of attentional biases with memory remain underexplored. We manipulated attention during encoding of trauma-irrelevant negative and neutral words and examined the differential relationship of their encoding and recall with PTSD symptoms. Responders to the World Trade Center disaster performed tasks in which they read negative and neural words (full attention, FA) and reported the color of another set of such words (divided-attention, DA). Subsequently, participants used word stems to aid retrieval of words shown in both tasks. PTSD symptoms were associated with slower performance for negative vs neutral words in FA but not DA tasks. Furthermore, greater PTSD symptoms severity was associated with more accurate recall of negative vs neutral words, irrespective of whether words were presented on FA or DA tasks. These findings suggest that PTSD symptoms in a trauma-exposed population are related to encoding of trauma-irrelevant negative information when attention is fully deployed and subsequent recall of negative information, irrespective of whether attention was fully deployed

Endogenous in-session cortisol during exposure therapy predicts symptom improvement: Preliminary results from a scopolamine-augmentation trial

The purpose of this study was to explore whether individual differences in glucocorticoid concentrations were associated with symptom improvement following exposure therapy for patients with social anxiety disorder. To do this, 60 participants with social anxiety disorder completed a randomized-controlled trial of exposure therapy, where participants were randomized to receive scopolamine-augmentation or placebo during their 7 exposure sessions. Scopolamine is an antimuscarinic which blocks the effects of acetylcholine and reduces autonomic arousal. During sessions 1, 4, 7, and during the post-treatment extinction assessment, participants provided up to 16 saliva samples (4 in each session). Pre-treatment, post-treatment, and at 1-month follow-up, participants completed the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale to monitor change in fear and avoidance symptoms. Elevated endogenous in-session cortisol during exposure sessions was associated with less symptom improvement from pre- to post-treatment and at 1-month follow-up. The association between elevated endogenous in-session cortisol and attenuated symptom change was not moderated by scopolamine treatment condition. Individuals with social anxiety disorder who have elevated neuroendocrine signaling may under-benefit from exposure therapy. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to examine whether endogenous in-session cortisol concentrations predict symptom changes following exposure therapy for the treatment of social anxiety disorder. More investigation of non-invasive and reliable biological markers that explain variability in responses to effective treatments are needed

Perceptual Thresholds for Threat Are Lowered in Anxiety: Evidence from Perceptual Psychophysics

Anxiety is believed to be characterized by heightened sensitivity to threat. The Behavior Inhibition System (BIS), a risk factor for anxiety, is hypothesized to index this threat sensitivity. The present study addresses a critical gap in the literature: Neither anxiety nor BIS have been clearly linked with greater threat sensitivity indexed by lowered perceptual thresholds. Here, we utilized psychophysical methods to precisely measure absolute perceptual thresholds for detection of threatening and neutral faces. We examined their relationships with self-reported BIS and anxious apprehension in individuals diagnosed with and without anxiety disorders. Irrespective of anxiety disorder diagnosis, higher self-reported BIS and anxious apprehension were associated with reduced perceptual thresholds for threatening versus neutral stimuli. BIS mediated the relationship between anxiety and lowered thresholds. Using adaptive psychometrics, this study offers key empirical evidence for current theories regarding greater threat sensitivity in anxiety and clarifies the role of BIS as a mediating mechanism

The Impact of COVID-19 Probability and Cost Estimates on Worry and Health Behavior Compliance in Young Adults

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is associated with elevated rates of anxiety and relatively lower compliance with public health guidelines in younger adults. To develop strategies for reducing anxiety and increasing adherence with health guidelines, it is important to understand the factors that contribute to anxiety and health compliance in the context of COVID-19. Earlier research has shown that greater perceived probability of negative events and their costs are associated with increased anxiety and compliance with health behaviors, but it is unclear what role they play in a novel pandemic surrounded by uncertainty. In the present study we measured 1) perceived probability as the self-reported probability of being infected and experiencing serious symptoms due to COVID-19 and 2) perceived cost as financial, real-world, physical, social and emotional consequences of being infected with COVID-19. Worry was assessed using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PWSQ) and health compliance was measured as endorsement of the World Health Organization (WHO) health directives for COVID-19. Our results showed that greater perceived costs of contracting the COVID-19 virus were associated with greater worry and compliance with health behaviors, even when controlling for probability estimates. Interestingly, neither self-reported worry nor its interaction with cost estimates was associated with increased engagement in health behaviors. Our results provide important insight into decision making mechanisms involved in both increased anxiety and health compliance in COVID-19 and have implications for developing psychoeducational and psychotherapeutic strategies to target both domains

Perceptual decision-making regarding phylogenetically salient stimuli

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

The road less traveled: low spatial frequency signals not prioritized in emotion-related decision making

Humans possess a remarkable ability to perceive emotional stimuli, particularly those evoking fear. However, the underlying cognitive and computational mechanisms that facilitate this perceptual process remain unclear. The classic “low road” hypothesis postulates that a subcortical neural pathway sensitive to low spatial frequency (LSF) visual signals is responsible for the rapid detection of fearful stimuli. However, the extent of its influence on behavioral perception is still debated. Furthermore, considering that threats frequently manifest within familiar contexts, where our attention is attuned to their presence and absence, it is imperative to explore whether signals supposedly from the low road plays a crucial role in fear perception under emotion-guided attention. Across four experiments (N = 199), we systematically investigated perceptual decision making when emotional faces were presented in low (LSF), high (HSF), and broad (BSF) spatial frequency (SF) under emotion and non-emotion guided attention. Our findings revealed a remarkable decrease in performance in detecting LSF emotional targets under emotion-guided attention, while HSF emotional targets remained unaffected. Drift Diffusion Modeling (DDM) further uncovered that emotion-guided attention suppressed the accumulation of evidence for LSF emotional information. These results unambiguously contradict the hypothesis that perceptual decision-making of emotional stimuli under top-down emotion-guided attention relies on the low road. Our findings shed new light on the intricate interplay between bottom-up and top-down factors involved in emotion perception, provide novel insights into the dual-pathway model of emotion processing, and bear significant implications for emotion theorization and its potential clinical applications

Knowledge of threat biases perceptual decision-making in anxiety: Evidence from signal detection theory and drift diffusion modeling

Background. Threat biases are considered key factors in the development and maintenance of anxiety. Yet, these biases are poorly operationalized and remain unquantified. Furthermore, it is unclear whether and how prior knowledge of threat and its uncertainty induce these biases and how they manifest in anxiety. Method. Participants (n=55) used prestimulus cues to decide whether the subsequently presented stimuli were threatening or neutral. The cues either provided no information about the probability (high uncertainty) or indicated high probability (low uncertainty) of encountering threatening or neutral targets. We used signal detection theory (SDT) and hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) to quantify bias. Results. High uncertainty threat cues improved discrimination of subsequent threatening and neutral stimuli more than the neutral cues. However, anxiety was associated with worse discrimination of threatening versus neutral stimuli following high uncertainty threat cues. Using HDDM, we found that threat cues biased decision-making not only by shifting the starting point of evidence accumulation towards the threat decision, but also by increasing the efficiency with which sensory evidence was accumulated for both threat-related and neutral decisions. However, higher anxiety was associated with a greater shift of starting point towards the threat decision, but not with the efficiency of evidence accumulation. Conclusions. Using computational modeling, these results highlight the biases by which knowledge regarding uncertain threat improves perceptual decision-making but impairs it in case of anxiety

Erratum to: Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition) (Autophagy, 12, 1, 1-222, 10.1080/15548627.2015.1100356

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