Dataset Information

Modulation of amygdala response to task-irrelevant emotion.

ABSTRACT: It has been shown that as cognitive demands of a non-emotional task increase, amygdala response to task-irrelevant emotional stimuli is reduced. However, it remains unclear whether effects are due to altered task demands, or altered perceptual input associated with task demands. Here, we present fMRI data from 20 adult males during a novel cognitive conflict task in which the requirement to scan emotional information was necessary for task performance and held constant across levels of cognitive conflict. Response to fearful facial expressions was attenuated under high (vs low) conflict conditions, as indexed by both slower reaction times and reduced right amygdala response. Psychophysiological interaction analysis showed that increased amygdala response to fear in the low conflict condition was accompanied by increased functional coupling with middle frontal gyrus, a prefrontal region previously associated with emotion regulation during cognitive task performance. These data suggest that amygdala response to emotion is modulated as a function of task demands, even when perceptual inputs are closely matched across load conditions. PPI data also show that, in particular emotional contexts, increased functional coupling of amygdala with prefrontal cortex can paradoxically occur when executive demands are lower.

SUBMITTER: Sebastian CL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5390695 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Modulation of amygdala response to task-irrelevant emotion.

Sebastian Catherine L CL McCrory Eamon J EJ De Brito Stephane A SA Viding Essi E

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 20170401 4

It has been shown that as cognitive demands of a non-emotional task increase, amygdala response to task-irrelevant emotional stimuli is reduced. However, it remains unclear whether effects are due to altered task demands, or altered perceptual input associated with task demands. Here, we present fMRI data from 20 adult males during a novel cognitive conflict task in which the requirement to scan emotional information was necessary for task performance and held constant across levels of cognitive ...[more]

PMID: 28119506

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Project description:Face recognition usually takes place in a social context, where faces are surrounded by other stimuli. These can act as distracting flankers which impair recognition. Previous work has suggested that flankers expressing negative emotions distract more than positive ones. However, the various negative emotions differ in their relative impact and it is unclear whether all negative emotions are equally distracting. We investigated the impact of three negative (angry, fearful, sad) and one positive (happy) facial flanker conditions on target recognition in an emotion discrimination task. We examined the effect of the receiver's gender, and the impact of two different temporal delays between flanker and target onset, as stimulus onset asynchrony is assumed to affect distractor strength. Participants identified and rated the emotional intensity of target faces surrounded by either face (emotional and neutral) or non-face flankers. Target faces were presented either simultaneously with the flankers, or delayed by 300 ms. Contrary to our hypothesis, negative flankers did not exert stronger distraction effects than positive or neutral flankers. However, happy flankers reduced recognition performance. Results of a follow-up experiment with a balanced number of emotion categories (one positive, one negative and one neutral flanker condition) suggest that the distraction effect of emotional flankers depends on the composition of the emotion categories. Additionally, congruency effects were found to be valence-specific and overruled by threat stimuli. Females responded more quickly and rated targets in happy flankers as less intense. This indicates a gender difference in emotion processing, with greater sensitivity to facial flankers in women. Targets were rated as more intense when they were presented without a temporal delay, possibly due to a stronger flanker contrast. These three experiments show that an exceptional processing of threat-related flanker stimuli depends on emotion category composition, which should be considered a mediating factor when examining emotional context effects.

Dataset Information

Modulation of amygdala response to task-irrelevant emotion.

Publications

Modulation of amygdala response to task-irrelevant emotion.

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