title: Hemodynamic effects of negative emotional pictures - a test-retest analysis.
abstract: We investigated subjective and hemodynamic responses towards disgust-inducing, fear-inducing, and neutral pictures in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Within an interval of 1 week, 24 male subjects underwent the same block design twice in order to analyze possible response changes to the repeated picture presentation. The results showed that disgust-inducing and fear-inducing scenes provoked a similar activation pattern in comparison to neutral scenes. This included the thalamus, primary and secondary visual fields, the amygdala, the hippocampus, and various regions of the prefrontal cortex. During the retest, the affective ratings hardly changed. In contrast, most of the previously observed brain activations disappeared, with the exception of the temporo-occipital activation. An additional analysis, which compared the emotion-related activation patterns during the two presentations, showed that the responses to the fear-inducing pictures were more stable than the responses to the disgust-inducing ones.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical and Physiological Psychology, Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany. rudolf.stark@psychol.uni-giessen.de
authors.forename: Rudolf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Stark
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schienle
authors.forename: Bertram
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Walter
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kirsch
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Blecker
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Ott
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schäfer
authors.forename: Gebhard
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sammer
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zimmermann
authors.forename: Dieter
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Vaitl
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions; D005239:Fear; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014796:Visual Perception