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State anxiety modulation of the amygdala response to unattended threat-related stimuli

Bishop, S. J., Duncan, J. and Lawrence, Andrew David

2004. State anxiety modulation of the amygdala response to unattended threat-related stimuli. The Journal of Neuroscience 24 (46) , pp. 10364-10368. 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2550-04.2004

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2550-04.2004

Abstract

Findings from fear-conditioning studies in rats and functional neuroimaging with human volunteers have led to the suggestion that the amygdala is involved in the preattentive detection of threat-related stimuli. However, some neuroimaging findings point to attentional modulation of the amygdala response. The clinical-cognitive literature suggests that the extent to which the processing of threat-related stimuli is modulated by attention is crucially dependent on participants' anxiety levels. Here, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study with 27 healthy volunteers to examine whether amygdala responsivity to unattended threat-related stimuli varies with individual differences in state anxiety. Pairs of houses and faces (both fearful or neutral in expression) were presented, and participants attended to either the faces or the houses and matched these stimuli on identity. “Low-anxious” participants showed a reduced amygdala response to unattended versus attended fearful faces, but “high-anxious” participants showed no such reduction, having an increased amygdala response to fearful versus neutral faces regardless of attentional focus. These findings suggest that anxiety may interact with attentional focus to determine the magnitude of the amygdala response to threat-related stimuli.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute (NMHRI)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	attention; emotion; fMRI; amygdala; anxiety; fear
Additional Information:	Pdf uploaded in accordance with publisher's policy at http://www.jneurosci.org/site/misc/ifa_policies.xhtml#copyright (accessed 27/02/2014).
Publisher:	Society for Neuroscience
ISSN:	0270-6474
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	04 May 2023 09:06
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/35476