Influence of repressive coping style on cortical activation during encoding of angry faces.

Background: Coping plays an important role for emotion regulation in threatening situations. The model of coping modes designates repression and sensitization as two independent coping styles. Repression consists of strategies that shield the individual from arousal.

Amygdala excitability to subliminally presented emotional faces distinguishes unipolar and bipolar depression: an fMRI and pattern classification study.

Background: Bipolar disorder and Major depressive disorder are difficult to differentiate during depressive episodes, motivating research for differentiating neurobiological markers. Dysfunctional amygdala responsiveness during emotion processing has been implicated in both disorders, but the important rapid and automatic stages of emotion processing in the amygdala have so far never been investigated in bipolar patients.

Methods: fMRI data of 22 bipolar depressed patients (BD), 22 matched unipolar depressed patients (MDD), and 22 healthy controls (HC) were obtained during processing of subliminal sad, happy and neutral faces.

Mood-congruent amygdala responses to subliminally presented facial expressions in major depression: associations with anhedonia.

Background: Anhedonia has long been recognized as a key feature of major depressive disorders, but little is known about the association between hedonic symptoms and neurobiological processes in depressed patients. We investigated whether amygdala mood-congruent responses to emotional stimuli in depressed patients are correlated with anhedonic symptoms at automatic levels of processing.

Methods: We measured amygdala responsiveness to subliminally presented sad and happy facial expressions in depressed patients and matched healthy controls using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Tumor necrosis factor gene variation predicts hippocampus volume in healthy individuals.

Background: Cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF) α have been implicated in neurodegeneration relevant to various neuropsychiatric disorders. Little is known about the genetic predisposition to neurodegenerative properties of cytokine genes on brain function and on hippocampus (HC) function in particular. In this study we investigate the neurodegenerative role of TNF polymorphisms on brain morphology in healthy individuals.

High responsivity to threat during the initial stage of perception in repression: a 3 T fMRI study.

Repression designates coping strategies such as avoidance, or denial that aim to shield the organism from threatening stimuli. Derakshan et al. have proposed the vigilance-avoidance theory of repressive coping.

Increased amygdala activation during automatic processing of facial emotion in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia patients show abnormalities in the processing of facial emotion. The amygdala is a central part of a brain network that is involved in the perception of facial emotions. Previous functional neuroimaging studies on the perception of facial emotion in schizophrenia have focused almost exclusively on controlled processing.

Attachment avoidance modulates neural response to masked facial emotion.

According to recent models of individual differences in attachment organization, a basic dimension of adult attachment is avoidance. Attachment-related avoidance corresponds to tendencies to withdraw from close relationships and to an unwillingness to rely on others. In the formation of attachment orientation during infancy facial emotional interaction plays a central role.

Threat sensitivity as assessed by automatic amygdala response to fearful faces predicts speed of visual search for facial expression.

It has been argued that the amygdala represents an integral component of a vigilance system that is primarily involved in the perception of ambiguous stimuli of biological relevance. The present investigation was conducted to examine the relationship between automatic amygdala responsivity to fearful faces which may be interpreted as an index of trait-like threat sensitivity and spatial processing characteristics of facial emotions. During 3T fMRI scanning, pictures of human faces bearing fearful, angry, and happy expressions were presented to 20 healthy volunteers using a backward masking procedure based on neutral facial expressions.

Cognitive coping style modulates neural responses to emotional faces in healthy humans: a 3-T FMRI study.

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.

Amygdala activation during masked presentation of emotional faces predicts conscious detection of threat-related faces.

It has been argued that critical functions of the human amygdala are to modulate the moment-to-moment vigilance level and to enhance the processing and the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing material. In this functional magnetic resonance study, pictures of human faces bearing fearful, angry, and happy expressions were presented to nine healthy volunteers using a backward masking procedure based on neutral facial expression. Activation of the left and right amygdala in response to the masked fearful faces (compared to neutral faces) was significantly correlated with the number of fearful faces detected.