Dataset Information

Functional Imaging of the Implicit Association of the Self With Life and Death.

ABSTRACT: Objective:A critical need exists to identify objective markers of suicide ideation. One potential suicide risk marker is the Suicide Implicit Association Task (S-IAT), a behavioral task that uses differential reaction times to compare the implicit association between the self and death to the implicit association between the self and life. Individuals with a stronger association between the self and death on the S-IAT are more likely to attempt suicide in the future. To better understand the neural underpinnings of the implicit association between self and either life or death, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) version of the S-IAT was adapted and piloted in healthy volunteers.

Method:An fMRI version of the S-IAT was administered to 28 healthy volunteers (ages 18-65, 14F/14M).

Results:Behavioral results were comparable to those seen in non-scanner versions of the task. The task was associated with patterns of neural activation in areas relevant to emotional processing, specifically the insula and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex.

Conclusions:Performance on the S-IAT fMRI task may reflect scores obtained outside of the scanner. In future evaluations, this task could help assess whether individuals at increased risk of suicide display a different pattern of neural activation in response to self/death and self/life stimuli.

SUBMITTER: Ballard ED

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6692253 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Functional Imaging of the Implicit Association of the Self With Life and Death.

Ballard Elizabeth D ED Reed Jessica L JL Szczepanik Joanna J Evans Jennifer W JW Yarrington Julia S JS Dickstein Daniel P DP Nock Matthew K MK Nugent Allison C AC Zarate Carlos A CA

Suicide & life-threatening behavior 20190213 6

<h4>Objective</h4>A critical need exists to identify objective markers of suicide ideation. One potential suicide risk marker is the Suicide Implicit Association Task (S-IAT), a behavioral task that uses differential reaction times to compare the implicit association between the self and death to the implicit association between the self and life. Individuals with a stronger association between the self and death on the S-IAT are more likely to attempt suicide in the future. To better understand ...[more]

PMID: 30761601

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Project description:The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a reaction time based categorization task that measures the differential associative strength between bipolar targets and evaluative attribute concepts as an approach to indexing implicit beliefs or biases. An open question exists as to what exactly the IAT measures, and here EEG (Electroencephalography) has been used to investigate the time course of ERPs (Event-related Potential) indices and implicated brain regions in the IAT. IAT-EEG research identifies a number of early (250-450 ms) negative ERPs indexing early-(pre-response) processing stages of the IAT. ERP activity in this time range is known to index processes related to cognitive control and semantic processing. A central focus of these efforts has been to use IAT-ERPs to delineate the implicit and explicit factors contributing to measured IAT effects. Increasing evidence indicates that cognitive control (and related top-down modulation of attention/perceptual processing) may be components in the effective measurement of IAT effects, as factors such as physical setting or task instruction can change an IAT measurement. In this study we further implicate the role of proactive cognitive control and top-down modulation of attention/perceptual processing in the IAT-EEG. We find statistically significant relationships between D-score (a reaction-time based measure of the IAT-effect) and early ERP-time windows, indicating where more rapid word categorizations driving the IAT effect are present, they are at least partly explainable by neural activity not significantly correlated with the IAT measurement itself. Using LORETA, we identify a number of brain regions driving these ERP-IAT relationships notably involving left-temporal, insular, cingulate, medial frontal and parietal cortex in time regions corresponding to the N2- and P3-related activity. The identified brain regions involved with reduced reaction times on congruent blocks coincide with those of previous studies.

Dataset Information

Functional Imaging of the Implicit Association of the Self With Life and Death.

Publications

Functional Imaging of the Implicit Association of the Self With Life and Death.

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