When anger dominates the mind: Increased motor corticospinal excitability in the face of threat.
Threat demands fast and adaptive reactions that are manifested at the physiological, behavioral, and phenomenological level and are responsive to the direction of threat and its severity for the individual. Here, we investigated the effects of threat directed toward or away from the observer on motor corticospinal excitability and explicit recognition. Sixteen healthy right-handed volunteers completed a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) task and a separate three-alternative forced-choice emotion recognition task. Single-pulse TMS to the left primary motor cortex was applied to measure motor evoked potentials from the right abductor pollicis brevis in response to dynamic angry, fearful, and neutral bodily expressions with blurred faces directed toward or away from the observer. Results showed that motor corticospinal excitability increased independent of direction of anger compared with fear and neutral. In contrast, anger was better recognized when directed toward the observer compared with when directed away from the observer, while the opposite pattern was found for fear. The present results provide evidence for the differential effects of threat direction on explicit recognition and motor corticospinal excitability. In the face of threat, motor corticospinal excitability increases independently of the direction of anger, indicative of the importance of more automatic reactions to threat.
Brain and Emotion Laboratory, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands.|Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.|Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Ruud
R
Hortensius
Brain and Emotion Laboratory, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands.|Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Beatrice
B
de Gelder
Donders Institute of Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Dennis J L G
DJ
Schutter
D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology*; D019054:Evoked Potentials, Motor / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011712:Pyramidal Tracts / Q000502:physiology*; D012938:Social Perception; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D055815:Young Adult
Anger; Bodily expressions; Fear; Motor corticospinal excitability; TMS; Threat