Awareness of Emotional Stimuli Determines the Behavioral Consequences of Amygdala Activation and Amygdala-Prefrontal Connectivity

Conscious awareness of negative cues is thought to enhance emotion-regulatory capacity, but the neural mechanisms underlying this effect are unknown. Using continuous flash suppression (CFS) in the MRI scanner, we manipulated visual awareness of fearful faces during an affect misattribution paradigm...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Lapate, R. C., Rokers, B., Tromp, D. P. M., Orfali, N. S., Oler, J. A., Doran, S. T., Adluru, N., Alexander, A. L., Davidson, R. J.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Nature Publishing Group 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4867584/

id	pubmed-4867584
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-48675842016-05-31 Awareness of Emotional Stimuli Determines the Behavioral Consequences of Amygdala Activation and Amygdala-Prefrontal Connectivity Lapate, R. C. Rokers, B. Tromp, D. P. M. Orfali, N. S. Oler, J. A. Doran, S. T. Adluru, N. Alexander, A. L. Davidson, R. J. Article Conscious awareness of negative cues is thought to enhance emotion-regulatory capacity, but the neural mechanisms underlying this effect are unknown. Using continuous flash suppression (CFS) in the MRI scanner, we manipulated visual awareness of fearful faces during an affect misattribution paradigm, in which preferences for neutral objects can be biased by the valence of a previously presented stimulus. The amygdala responded to fearful faces independently of awareness. However, when awareness of fearful faces was prevented, individuals with greater amygdala responses displayed a negative bias toward unrelated novel neutral faces. In contrast, during the aware condition, inverse coupling between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex reduced this bias, particularly among individuals with higher structural connectivity in the major white matter pathway connecting the prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Collectively, these results indicate that awareness promotes the function of a critical emotion-regulatory network targeting the amygdala, providing a mechanistic account for the role of awareness in emotion regulation. Nature Publishing Group 2016-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4867584/ /pubmed/27181344 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep25826 Text en Copyright © 2016, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Lapate, R. C. Rokers, B. Tromp, D. P. M. Orfali, N. S. Oler, J. A. Doran, S. T. Adluru, N. Alexander, A. L. Davidson, R. J.
spellingShingle	Lapate, R. C. Rokers, B. Tromp, D. P. M. Orfali, N. S. Oler, J. A. Doran, S. T. Adluru, N. Alexander, A. L. Davidson, R. J. Awareness of Emotional Stimuli Determines the Behavioral Consequences of Amygdala Activation and Amygdala-Prefrontal Connectivity
author_facet	Lapate, R. C. Rokers, B. Tromp, D. P. M. Orfali, N. S. Oler, J. A. Doran, S. T. Adluru, N. Alexander, A. L. Davidson, R. J.
author_sort	Lapate, R. C.
title	Awareness of Emotional Stimuli Determines the Behavioral Consequences of Amygdala Activation and Amygdala-Prefrontal Connectivity
title_short	Awareness of Emotional Stimuli Determines the Behavioral Consequences of Amygdala Activation and Amygdala-Prefrontal Connectivity
title_full	Awareness of Emotional Stimuli Determines the Behavioral Consequences of Amygdala Activation and Amygdala-Prefrontal Connectivity
title_fullStr	Awareness of Emotional Stimuli Determines the Behavioral Consequences of Amygdala Activation and Amygdala-Prefrontal Connectivity
title_full_unstemmed	Awareness of Emotional Stimuli Determines the Behavioral Consequences of Amygdala Activation and Amygdala-Prefrontal Connectivity
title_sort	awareness of emotional stimuli determines the behavioral consequences of amygdala activation and amygdala-prefrontal connectivity
description	Conscious awareness of negative cues is thought to enhance emotion-regulatory capacity, but the neural mechanisms underlying this effect are unknown. Using continuous flash suppression (CFS) in the MRI scanner, we manipulated visual awareness of fearful faces during an affect misattribution paradigm, in which preferences for neutral objects can be biased by the valence of a previously presented stimulus. The amygdala responded to fearful faces independently of awareness. However, when awareness of fearful faces was prevented, individuals with greater amygdala responses displayed a negative bias toward unrelated novel neutral faces. In contrast, during the aware condition, inverse coupling between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex reduced this bias, particularly among individuals with higher structural connectivity in the major white matter pathway connecting the prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Collectively, these results indicate that awareness promotes the function of a critical emotion-regulatory network targeting the amygdala, providing a mechanistic account for the role of awareness in emotion regulation.
publisher	Nature Publishing Group
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4867584/
_version_	1613579475264471040

Awareness of Emotional Stimuli Determines the Behavioral Consequences of Amygdala Activation and Amygdala-Prefrontal Connectivity

Similar Items