Brain activity associated with illusory correlations in animal phobia

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Anxiety disorders often involve overestimating associations between disorder-relevant cues and negative outcomes, a phenomenon known as illusory correlation (IC).
• Illusory correlation may contribute to fear relapse after extinction, but its neural underpinnings remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying illusory correlation in spider phobia.
• To examine the relationship between illusory correlation strength and brain activity in response to phobia-relevant stimuli.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study 18 female patients with spider phobia and 18 healthy controls.
• Participants were exposed to spider, mushroom, and puppy images, randomly followed by either a shock or no shock.
• Subjective expectancy ratings and brain activation patterns were analyzed in relation to shock outcomes.

Main Results:

• Both groups initially overestimated shock likelihood after spider images, but only spider phobia patients maintained this illusory correlation (IC).
• The strength of IC in patients correlated with higher perceived outcome aversiveness and increased primary sensory-motor cortex activity.
• Elevated left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activation to spider images predicted the magnitude of IC.

Conclusions:

• Phobia-relevant stimuli amplify sensory-motor representations of aversive outcomes, potentially driving overestimation in anxiety disorders.
• Hyperactivity in the dlPFC may impair executive functions, hindering accurate contingency monitoring and fear extinction in phobia.
• These findings highlight the role of cognitive biases and associated neural mechanisms in maintaining phobic fear.