Rapid prefrontal cortex activation towards aversively paired faces and enhanced contingency detection are observed in highly trait-anxious women under challenging conditions

Abstract

Relative to healthy controls, anxiety-disorder patients show anomalies in classical conditioning that may either result from, or provide a risk factor for, clinically relevant anxiety. Here, we investigated whether healthy participants with enhanced anxiety vulnerability show abnormalities in a challenging affective-conditioning paradigm, in which many stimulus-reinforcer associations had to be acquired with only few learning trials. Forty-seven high and low trait-anxious females underwent MultiCS conditioning, in which 52 different neutral faces (CS+) were paired with an aversive noise (US), while further 52 faces (CS−) remained unpaired. Emotional learning was assessed by evaluative (rating), behavioral (dot-probe, contingency report), and neurophysiological (magnetoencephalography) measures before, during, and after learning. High and low trait-anxious groups did not differ in evaluative ratings or response priming before or after conditioning. High trait-anxious women, however, were better than low trait-anxious women at reporting CS+/US contingencies after conditioning, and showed an enhanced prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation towards CS+ in the M1 (i.e., 80–117 ms) and M170 time intervals (i.e., 140–160 ms) during acquisition. These effects in MultiCS conditioning observed in individuals with elevated trait anxiety are consistent with theories of enhanced conditionability in anxiety vulnerability. Furthermore, they point towards increased threat monitoring and detection in highly trait-anxious females, possibly mediated by alterations in visual working memory.

Associated valence impacts early visual processing of letter strings: Evidence from ERPs in a cross-modal learning paradigm

“…As stated above, there is consensus that modulations within the first 200 ms are less stable and less reliably observed than later effects, likely due to their focal nature and their short duration. Furthermore, previous research suggests an influence of participant characteristics, such as trait anxiety, on the occurrence effects of associated valence (Rehbein et al, 2015). In order to corroborate the validity of our effects, we conducted exploratory brain-behaviour correlations, showing that the amplitudes of the central negativity from 85 to 100 for negative stimuli acquired in the visual domain was related to steeper learning slopes of those stimuli, indicating that faster acquisition was related to higher (negative) amplitudes.…”

“…In addition to the studies reported above, a number of studies have employed classical conditioning paradigms in order to pair unconditioned stimuli with aversive/appetitive stimuli. Similar to the studies reported above, these investigations report rapid effects of conditioned valence starting from 50 ms after stimulus onset, both for abstract stimuli (Hintze, Junghöfer, & Bruchmann, 2014;Stolarova, Keil, & Moratti, 2006) and stimuli with biological relevance (Pizzagalli, Greischar, & Davidson, 2003;Rehbein et al, 2014;Rehbein et al, 2015). Interestingly, a number of these studies have shown that even rapid effects are not merely based on modulations in sensory areas, but also involve activations in prefrontal areas (Hintze et al, 2014;Steinberg, Bröckelmann, Rehbein, Dobel, & Junghöfer, 2013).…”

When neutral turns significant: brain dynamics of rapidly formed associations between neutral stimuli and emotional contexts

“…Recent research using MultiCS paradigms, however, found that CS+ could also produce changes in visual-and auditory-related areas in a very fast fashion i.e. after few or single associations (Br€ ockelmann et al, 2011;Steinberg et al, 2012;Rehbein et al, 2014). This study extends these findings showing that one single association between neutral objects and relatively weak UCSs (images) is enough to readjust the visual processing of relevant information based on a rapid update of its motivational value, evoking enhanced P100 amplitudes in response to neutral cues bound to or associated with emotional contexts.…”

“…Brain activation was measured using electro‐ and magnetoencephalography (EEG, MEG) during these conditioning procedures. After multiple pairings, CSs+ compared to CSs− evoked enhanced neural activity at prefrontal and sensory cortical regions during earlier (< 300 ms; Bröckelmann et al ., ; Steinberg et al ., , ; Rehbein et al ., , ) and later stages of processing (> 300 ms; Pastor et al ., ), irrespective of contingency awareness. These results suggest the existence of a rather automatic learning mechanism that rapidly transfers the emotional properties of the UCS to CSs, leading to a facilitated perceptual and a more elaborated processing of the CS+.…”

“…It is also unclear whether the acquired motivational significance leading to neural response enhancement for emotion-associated stimuli occurs rapidly after one single pairing (e.g. Morel et al, 2012;Rehbein et al, 2014), or whether more than one repetition is needed to form such associations (e.g. Steinberg et al, 2012).…”