title: Levels of appraisal: a medial prefrontal role in high-level appraisal of emotional material.
abstract: Appraisal refers to the evaluation of the meaning of emotional stimuli and is considered causal in the generation of an emotional response. Cognitive neuroscience has paid little attention to a theoretical distinction between low-level appraisal, considered to be automatic and preattentive, and high-level appraisal that requires attentional and working memory resources. To disentangle low-level from high-level appraisal, we varied cognitive load in a concurrent, unrelated working memory task, while anxiety was induced through anticipation of impending pain. Confirming theoretical predictions, we show that anxiety-related activity in dorsal medial prefrontal/rostral anterior cingulate cortex (dorsal MPFC/ACC) is attenuated under high, relative to low, cognitive load. Lateral prefrontal regions previously implicated in reappraisal and cognitive emotion regulation show a similar interaction between anxiety and cognitive load. Critically, there were no changes in physiological and subjective measures of low-level appraisal outcome and emotional response generation as a function of load, allowing us to conclude that MPFC/ACC and lateral PFC activity during anticipatory anxiety reflects high-level appraisal. Our data provide neurobiological evidence for a distinction between low-level and high-level appraisal mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Functional Imaging Laboratory, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, UK. rkalisch@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Raffael
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kalisch
authors.forename: Katja
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wiech
authors.forename: Hugo D
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Critchley
authors.forename: Raymond J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Dolan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000503:physiopathology; D010146:Pain / Q000503:physiopathology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012691:Serial Learning / Q000502:physiology