Neural Activation and Connectivity underlying Face Encoding and Retrieval under Threat-of-Shock
Poster No:
455
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Sarah Buehler1, Millie Lowther1, Peter Kirk1, Paulina Lukow1, Oliver Robinson1
Institutions:
1UCL, London, United Kingdom
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
There is mixed evidence pointing to alterations in emotional face recognition in pathological and experimentally induced anxiety. We investigated this by manipulating anxiety levels using threat-of-shock, distinctly at the encoding and retrieval stage. Based on previous studies, we hypothesized that the ability to recognize (i.e., retrieve) faces is reduced when these are perceived (i.e., encoded) under threat-of-shock (Bolton & Robinson/2017/Learning & Memory/24/532-542; Garibbo et al./2019/Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience/14/1087-1096).
Methods:
We analysed behavioural and fMRI data in 92 participants as they completeted a face recognition task under threat-of-shock. We investigated behaviour using an ANOVA and meta-analysis (our N=92, N=86 in Bolton & Robinson, 2017; N=32 in Garibbo et al., 2019, total N=210). For the underlying neural correlates, we assessed neural activation in our sample and combined with Garibbo et al., 2019 at the whole-brain level and in predefined regions of interest (ROIs; anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus). Further, we investigated how functional connectivity is modulated using a generalized psychophysiological interaction (gPPI) analysis of the bilateral amygdala and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which are relevant to anxiety.
Results:
In our sample (N=92) we found a significant main effect of encoding state (F=4.246, p=0.042, ηp2=0.044), with more accurate retrieval for faces encoded during safety (M=0.668, sd=0.172) compared to threat-of-shock (M=0.652, sd=0.157), which was supported by a meta-analysis (Cohen's d=0.26, z=3.52, p<0.001). At the neural level, a whole brain analysis revealed that this behavioural effect was associated with a significant cluster in the posterior cingulate cortex (voxel-wise threshold=p<0.001, cluster-level significance threshold=p<0.05). Interestinly, the strength of activation in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) cluster during encoding was significantly negatively correlated with the recognition accuracy of those faces at the behavioural level (t=-2.795, df=90, p=0.006, R=-0.28). This suggests that those individuals who had higher PCC activation while encoding faces under threat-of-shock were subsequently worse at remembering those faces. In a combined whole brain mega-analysis of the current study sample (N=92) and a previous sample from Garibbo et al. (2019: N=32) we found that both the PCC and a cluster in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were significantly more active when encoding under threat-of-shock compared to safety. However, we found no significant functional connectivity results in our psychophysiological interaction analysis.
Conclusions:
Threat-of-shock induced anxiety during the encoding stage appears to robustly impair subsequent face recognition. This may result from the attentional demands of a heightened anxious arousal state competing with the attentional resources required to encode faces, which are subsequently retrieved less accurately. The underlying neural activation we observed in the posterior and anterior cingulate regions might signal the tuning of selective attention to internal, self-relevant cues and increase with arousal state (Abraham et al., 2013; Daley et al., 2020; Leech & Sharp, 2014). It is well-established that posterior and anterior cingulate regions have reciprocal connections with subcortical structures that are involved in processing interoceptive signals, such as the heart beat (Northoff et al., 2006), which allows them to control attentional allocation to interoceptive arousal signals (Stern et al., 2017). Therefore, we propose a potential extension to the influential attentional control theory (Eysenck et al., 2007), which posits that anxiety reduces goal-directed attentional processing, and suggest that this may be paralleled by an increase in internally directed attention.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotional Perception 2
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI)
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural)
fMRI Connectivity and Network Modeling
Keywords:
Anxiety
Cognition
Emotions
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Psychiatric
Psychiatric Disorders
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
·Results for whole-brain analysis of neural activation
·Threat-of-Shock potentiated Face Recognition Task
Provide references using author date format
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8812068/