Poster No:
632
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
HaYoung Kim1, Seokwon Choi1, Hyeri Moon1, HaYoung Bae1, Jaeoh Lee1, Yeojin Choi1, Ji-Won Hur1
Institutions:
1Korea University, Seoul, Korea, Republic of
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Hyeri Moon
Korea University
Seoul, Korea, Republic of
Jaeoh Lee
Korea University
Seoul, Korea, Republic of
Ji-Won Hur
Korea University
Seoul, Korea, Republic of
Introduction:
Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is the deliberate infliction of damage to one's own body tissues without suicidal intent. Difficulties in emotional regulation have been identified as critical psychopathologies that contribute to the initiation and maintenance of NSSI. In this study, we sought to investigate the attentional bias towards negative emotional stimuli and its underlying neural correlates in NSSI. Attentional bias towards negative emotions is known to intensify negative affectivity in individuals with clinical symptoms such as suicide ideation, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder. We hypothesized that individuals with NSSI would have increased neural responses to negative facial emotions that might be related to their clinical symptoms.
Methods:
We recruited 25 individuals with a history of NSSI and 14 sex- and handedness-matched controls. All participants completed the emotional dot-probe task. In the emotional dot-probe task, a facial emotion stimulus and a neutral face stimulus simultaneously on the screen. The stimuli disappeared immediately, and a target dot appeared on the left or right of the screen. Participants were then asked to indicate the location of the disappeared dot by pressing either the first (i.e., left) or second (i.e., right) button. The emotional stimuli consisted of negative facial emotion expressions (i.e., anger and disgust) and neutral facial expressions from 14 different actors (7 males, 7 females) using the Extended ChaeLee Korean Facial Expressions of Emotions (ChaeLee-E). This emotional dot-probe task included two conditions. In the congruent condition, the dot probe was presented at the exact location where the emotional stimuli appeared. In the incongruent condition, the dot probe was presented at the opposite location of the emotional stimuli. The CONN toolbox was used for the fMRI data preprocessing. We also used Statistical Parametric Mapping 12 to analyze the BOLD signal changes and SPSS version 27 to conduct correlation analyses between neural activities and clinical measures in NSSI.
Results:
Individuals engaging in NSSI showed increased neural activation in the left medial frontal lobe and Heschl's gyri in the incongruent condition (incongruent > congruent) compared to controls. More specifically? In particular? individuals with NSSI also showed hyperactivity in the left opercular and triangular regions of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in the anger condition (anger > neutral) and disgust condition (disgust > neutral), respectively. Greater levels of anxiety as measured by the General Anxiety Disorder-7 and impulsive behaviors as measured by the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale in the NSSI group were significantly correlated with the enhanced left medial frontal lobe activation in the incongruent condition. In addition, higher levels of guilt as measured by the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA-3S) and perfectionism as measured by the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS) in NSSI were both correlated with hyperactivity of the left opercular region of the IFG, and perfectionism was further correlated with the hyperactivity of the triangular regions of the IFG.
Conclusions:
This study is the first to address the neural mechanisms of attentional bias in individuals engaging in NSSI. Our fMRI study revealed the attentional bias to the negative facial emotion expressions in individuals with NSSI and its underlying neural activity, which was related with anxiety, impulsive behaviors, guilt, and perfectionism. These identified neural mechanisms allow us further to understand the biased emotional processing in individuals with NSSI and provide rationale for developing interventions to target their attentional bias toward negative stimuli better.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotional Perception
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI) 2
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Attention: Visual
Keywords:
Emotions
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Other - Nonsuicidal self-injury, Emotional dot probe task, Attentional bias
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
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