Hemodynamic effects of negative emotional pictures - a test-retest analysis.
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.
Stark
Rudolf
R
Department of Clinical and Physiological Psychology, Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany. rudolf.stark@psychol.uni-giessen.de
Schienle
Anne
A
Walter
Bertram
B
Kirsch
Peter
P
Blecker
Carlo
C
Ott
Ulrich
U
Schäfer
Axel
A
Sammer
Gebhard
G
Zimmermann
Mark
M
Vaitl
Dieter
D
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