title: Cognitive coping style modulates neural responses to emotional faces in healthy humans: a 3-T FMRI study.
abstract: Repression designates coping strategies that aim to shield the organism from distressing stimuli by disregarding their aversive characteristics. In contrast, sensitization comprises coping strategies that are employed to reduce situational uncertainty such as analyzing the environment. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to study neural correlates of coping styles during the perception of threatening and nonthreatening socially relevant information. Pictures of human faces bearing fearful (ambiguously threatening), angry (unambiguously threatening), happy (nonthreatening), and neutral expressions were presented masked and unmasked. Two groups of subjects were examined who were defined as consistent repressors versus consistent sensitizers with the Mainz Coping Inventory. Sensitizers tended to exhibit stronger neural responses in the amygdala to unmasked fearful faces compared with repressors. Overall, repressors were cortically more responsive to fearful (ambiguously threatening) and happy (nonthreatening) facial expressions than sensitizers, whereas sensitizers presented an enhanced responsivity to angry faces in several prefrontal areas, that is, unambiguously threatening expressions. Results from time series analyses suggest that sensitizers could exhibit less top-down cortical regulation of the amygdala than repressors in the processing of fearful faces. An increased responsivity of the amygdala to ambiguously threatening stimuli may represent a biological determinant of sensitizers' feelings of uncertainty.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
authors.forename: Astrid Veronika
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Rauch
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ohrmann
authors.forename: Jochen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bauer
authors.forename: Harald
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kugel
authors.forename: Almut
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Engelien
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Arolt
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Heindel
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Suslow
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*