Judging emotion in natural images of crowds.

It has been suggested that humans use summary statistics such as the average of the emotion of individual faces when they rapidly judge group emotion. Previous studies have mainly used faces of actors posing basic emotions, and morphed versions of these faces, against a plain background. In the present study, photographs taken in real-world settings were used to investigate the influence of mean facial emotion, maximal facial emotion, and background context on judgments of group emotion, assessed using dimensional ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance.

Occipital-temporal cortical tuning to semantic and affective features of natural images predicts associated behavioral responses.

In everyday life, people need to respond appropriately to many types of emotional stimuli. Here, we investigate whether human occipital-temporal cortex (OTC) shows co-representation of the semantic category and affective content of visual stimuli. We also explore whether OTC transformation of semantic and affective features extracts information of value for guiding behavior.

The Computational and Neural Substrates of Ambiguity Avoidance in Anxiety.

Theoretical accounts have linked anxiety to intolerance of ambiguity. However, this relationship has not been well operationalized empirically. Here, we used computational and neuro-imaging methods to characterize anxiety-related differences in aversive decision-making under ambiguity and associated patterns of cortical activity.

Executive Function Assigns Value to Novel Goal-Congruent Outcomes.

People often learn from the outcomes of their actions, even when these outcomes do not involve material rewards or punishments. How does our brain provide this flexibility? We combined behavior, computational modeling, and functional neuroimaging to probe whether learning from abstract novel outcomes harnesses the same circuitry that supports learning from familiar secondary reinforcers. Behavior and neuroimaging revealed that novel images can act as a substitute for rewards during instrumental learning, producing reliable reward-like signals in dopaminergic circuits.

Impaired adaptation of learning to contingency volatility in internalizing psychopathology.

Using a contingency volatility manipulation, we tested the hypothesis that difficulty adapting probabilistic decision-making to second-order uncertainty might reflect a core deficit that cuts across anxiety and depression and holds regardless of whether outcomes are aversive or involve reward gain or loss. We used bifactor modeling of internalizing symptoms to separate symptom variance common to both anxiety and depression from that unique to each. Across two experiments, we modeled performance on a probabilistic decision-making under volatility task using a hierarchical Bayesian framework.

Effect of Prefrontal Cortex Stimulation on Regulation of Amygdala Response to Threat in Individuals With Trait Anxiety: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is under clinical investigation as a treatment for major depressive disorder. However, the mechanisms of action are unclear, and there is a lack of neuroimaging evidence, particularly among individuals with affective dysfunction. Furthermore, there is no direct causal evidence among humans that the prefrontal-amygdala circuit functions as described in animal models (ie, that increasing activity in prefrontal cortical control regions inhibits amygdala response to threat).

Stratification of MDD and GAD patients by resting state brain connectivity predicts cognitive bias.

Patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) show between-group comorbidity and symptom overlap, and within-group heterogeneity. Resting state functional connectivity might provide an alternate, biologically informed means by which to stratify patients with GAD or MDD. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired from 23 adults with GAD, 21 adults with MDD, and 27 healthy adult control participants.

Anxiety, Depression, and Decision Making: A Computational Perspective.

In everyday life, the outcomes of our actions are rarely certain. Further, we often lack the information needed to precisely estimate the probability and value of potential outcomes as well as how much effort will be required by the courses of action under consideration. Under such conditions of uncertainty, individual differences in the estimation and weighting of these variables, and in reliance on model-free versus model-based decision making, have the potential to strongly influence our behavior.

Distinct frontal and amygdala correlates of change detection for facial identity and expression.

Recruitment of 'top-down' frontal attentional mechanisms is held to support detection of changes in task-relevant stimuli. Fluctuations in intrinsic frontal activity have been shown to impact task performance more generally. Meanwhile, the amygdala has been implicated in 'bottom-up' attentional capture by threat.

Functional Connectivity under Anticipation of Shock: Correlates of Trait Anxious Affect versus Induced Anxiety.

Sustained anxiety about potential future negative events is an important feature of anxiety disorders. In this study, we used a novel anticipation of shock paradigm to investigate individual differences in functional connectivity during prolonged threat of shock. We examined the correlates of between-participant differences in trait anxious affect and induced anxiety, where the latter reflects changes in self-reported anxiety resulting from the shock manipulation.

Seeing the world through non rose-colored glasses: anxiety and the amygdala response to blended expressions.

Anxious individuals have a greater tendency to categorize faces with ambiguous emotional expressions as fearful (Richards et al., 2002). These behavioral findings might reflect anxiety-related biases in stimulus representation within the human amygdala.

Anxious individuals have difficulty learning the causal statistics of aversive environments.

Statistical regularities in the causal structure of the environment enable us to predict the probable outcomes of our actions. Environments differ in the extent to which action-outcome contingencies are stable or volatile. Difficulty in being able to use this information to optimally update outcome predictions might contribute to the decision-making difficulties seen in anxiety.

Moderate threat causes longer lasting disruption to processing in anxious individuals.

Anxiety is associated with increased attentional capture by threat. Previous studies have used simultaneous or briefly separated (<1 s) presentation of threat distractors and target stimuli. Here, we tested the hypothesis that high trait anxious participants would show a longer time window within which distractors cause disruption to subsequent task processing, and that this would particularly be observed for stimuli of moderate or ambiguous threat value.

Resting state correlates of subdimensions of anxious affect.

Resting state fMRI may help identify markers of risk for affective disorder. Given the comorbidity of anxiety and depressive disorders and the heterogeneity of these disorders as defined by DSM, an important challenge is to identify alterations in resting state brain connectivity uniquely associated with distinct profiles of negative affect. The current study aimed to address this by identifying differences in brain connectivity specifically linked to cognitive and physiological profiles of anxiety, controlling for depressed affect.

Unraveling the anxious mind: anxiety, worry, and frontal engagement in sustained attention versus off-task processing.

Much remains unknown regarding the relationship between anxiety, worry, sustained attention, and frontal function. Here, we addressed this using a sustained attention task adapted for functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants responded to presentation of simple stimuli, withholding responses to an infrequent "No Go" stimulus.

Fear-conditioning mechanisms associated with trait vulnerability to anxiety in humans.

Investigations of fear conditioning in rodents and humans have illuminated the neural mechanisms underlying cued and contextual fear. A critical question is how personality dimensions such as trait anxiety act through these mechanisms to confer vulnerability to anxiety disorders, and whether humans' ability to overcome acquired fears depends on regulatory skills not characterized in animal models. In a neuroimaging study of fear conditioning in humans, we found evidence for two independent dimensions of neurocognitive function associated with trait vulnerability to anxiety.

Trait anxiety and impoverished prefrontal control of attention.

Many neurocognitive models of anxiety emphasize the importance of a hyper-responsive threat-detection system centered on the amygdala, with recent accounts incorporating a role for prefrontal mechanisms in regulating attention to threat. Here we investigated whether trait anxiety is associated with a much broader dysregulation of attentional control. Volunteers performed a response-conflict task under conditions that posed high or low demands on attention.

Neural mechanisms underlying selective attention to threat.

Biased competition models of selective attention suggest that attentional competition is influenced both by bottom-up sensory mechanisms sensitive to stimulus salience and top-down control mechanisms that support the processing of task-relevant stimuli. This provides a framework for investigating the neural mechanisms underlying selective attention to threat. Both subcortical regions implicated in threat detection--specifically the amygdala--and prefrontal cortical regions implicated in top-down attentional control are activated in response to task-irrelevant threat stimuli.

COMT val158met genotype affects recruitment of neural mechanisms supporting fluid intelligence.

Fluid intelligence (g(f)) influences performance across many cognitive domains. It is affected by both genetic and environmental factors. Tasks tapping g(f) activate a network of brain regions including the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), the presupplementary motor area/anterior cingulate cortex (pre-SMA/ACC), and the intraparietal sulcus (IPS).

Neurocognitive mechanisms of anxiety: an integrative account.

Anxiety can be hugely disruptive to everyday life. Anxious individuals show increased attentional capture by potential signs of danger, and interpret expressions, comments and events in a negative manner. These cognitive biases have been widely explored in human anxiety research.

Neural processing of fearful faces: effects of anxiety are gated by perceptual capacity limitations.

Debate continues as to the automaticity of the amygdala's response to threat. Accounts taking a strong automaticity line suggest that the amygdala's response to threat is both involuntary and independent of attentional resources. Building on these accounts, prominent models have suggested that anxiety modulates the output of an amygdala-based preattentive threat evaluation system.

COMT genotype influences prefrontal response to emotional distraction.

Early studies of genetic effects on brain activity have been conducted to investigate primarily either the influence of polymorphisms in dopaminergic genes, especially the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, on prefrontal cognitive processes such as working memory, or that of polymorphisms in the serotonin transporter gene on the amygdala response to threatening stimuli. Here, we address genetic influences on the neural systems underlying cognitive-affective interactions. Specifically, we assess the effect of the CO MT val158met polymorphism onfrontal regulation of attentionunder emotional distraction.

State anxiety modulation of the amygdala response to unattended threat-related stimuli.

Findings from fear-conditioning studies in rats and functional neuroimaging with human volunteers have led to the suggestion that the amygdala is involved in the preattentive detection of threat-related stimuli. However, some neuroimaging findings point to attentional modulation of the amygdala response. The clinical-cognitive literature suggests that the extent to which the processing of threat-related stimuli is modulated by attention is crucially dependent on participants' anxiety levels.

Memory for emotional stories in high and low depressed children.

Cognitive theories of depression emphasise a vicious circle linking depressed mood and biased recall towards negative information. In line with this, depressed adults show selectively enhanced recall for negative information. This recall bias is held to be mediated by increased accessibility of negative self-referent schemas formed as a result of adverse early experiences.