Chemosensory anxiety cues enhance the perception of fearful faces - An fMRI study.
Recent evidence suggests that humans can communicate emotion via chemosensory signals. Olfactory cues signaling anxiety can bias the perception of ambiguous stimuli, but the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of this effect are currently unknown. Here, we investigated the brain responses to subtle changes in facial expressions in response to anxiety chemosensory cues. Ten healthy individuals donated their sweat in two situations: while anticipating an important oral examination (anxiety condition) and during physical exercise (control condition). Subsequently, 24 participants completed a parametrically morphed (neutral to fearful) emotion recognition task under exposure to the olfactory cues of anxiety and sports, in the fMRI scanner. Behaviorally, the participants rated more discernible fearful faces as more fearful and neutral faces as more neutral under exposure to the anxiety cues. For brain response, under exposure to the anxiety cues, increased fearfulness of the face corresponded to increased activity in the left insula and the left middle occipital gyrus extending into fusiform gyrus. Moreover, with higher subjective ratings of facial fearfulness, participants additionally showed increased activity in the left hippocampus. These results suggest that chemosensory anxiety cues facilitate processing of socially relevant fearful stimuli and boost memory retrieval due to enhanced emotional context.
Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-BRAIN Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships: Decoding the Human Brain at systemic levels, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH and RWTH Aachen University, Jülich, Germany.. Electronic address: owudarczyk@gmail.com.
Olga A
OA
Wudarczyk
Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-BRAIN Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships: Decoding the Human Brain at systemic levels, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH and RWTH Aachen University, Jülich, Germany.; Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Nils
N
Kohn
Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-BRAIN Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships: Decoding the Human Brain at systemic levels, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH and RWTH Aachen University, Jülich, Germany.
Rene
R
Bergs
Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-BRAIN Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships: Decoding the Human Brain at systemic levels, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH and RWTH Aachen University, Jülich, Germany.
Katharina S
KS
Goerlich
Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Raquel E
RE
Gur
Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Bruce
B
Turetsky
Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-BRAIN Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships: Decoding the Human Brain at systemic levels, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH and RWTH Aachen University, Jülich, Germany.
Frank
F
Schneider
Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-BRAIN Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships: Decoding the Human Brain at systemic levels, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH and RWTH Aachen University, Jülich, Germany.
Ute
U
Habel
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000378:metabolism*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D055696:Olfactory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D049049:Pheromones, Human / Q000494:pharmacology*; D055815:Young Adult
D049049:Pheromones, Human
Anxiety; Chemosignals; Emotion recognition; Olfaction; fMRI