title: Self-relevant threat contexts enhance early processing of fear-conditioned faces.
abstract: Anxiety states are characterized by attentional biases to threat and increased early brain responses to potentially threat signaling stimuli. How such stimuli are processed further depends on prior learning experiences (e.g. conditioning and extinction) and the context in which a stimulus appears. Whether context information and prior learning experiences interact with early threat processing in humans is largely unknown. Here, EEG was recorded while healthy participants (N=20) viewed faces that were fear-conditioned and/or extinguished 24h before. Faces were either passively viewed or presented within different contexts, which were created by describing scenarios that could either involve participants directly (self-threatening), or made them observers (other-threatening) of a potentially dangerous situation. Early brain responses (i.e., P1 amplitudes) were specifically enhanced during the self-threatening condition in response to non-extinguished versus extinguished fear-conditioned faces. This finding suggests that top-down contextual information is incorporated into early attention modulation of previously learned threat signals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Marburg, Gutenbergstr. 18, 35037 Marburg, Germany; Department of General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics, University Hospital Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 410, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany. Electronic address: hannah.muench@uni-tuebingen.de.
authors.forename: Hannah M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Muench
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Bern, Fabrikstr. 8, 3012 Bern, Switzerland. Electronic address: stefan.westermann@psy.unibe.ch.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Westermann
authors.affiliation: Center for Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research, McLean Hospital, 115 Mill St., Belmont, MA 02478, USA. Electronic address: dap@mclean.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Diego A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Pizzagalli
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, 648 Beacon St., 6th Fl. Boston, MA 02215, USA. Electronic address: shofmann@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Stefan G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Hofmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Marburg, Gutenbergstr. 18, 35037 Marburg, Germany. Electronic address: erik.mueller@staff.uni-marburg.de.
authors.forename: Erik M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Mueller
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D000070379:Attentional Bias / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D003469:Culture; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005108:Extinction, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male
keywords: Emotion regulation; Face processing; P1; Pavlovian conditioning