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Published on: September 28, 2018
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Effect of Threat on Right dlPFC Activity during Behavioral Pattern Separation
Nicholas L Balderston1, Abigail Hsiung2, Monique Ernst2
1Section on Neurobiology of Fear and Anxiety, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892 nicholas.balderston@nih.gov.
Summary
Anxiety may impair cognitive control, leading to overgeneralization. This study found that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), not the hippocampus, showed increased activity during threat, suggesting its role in differentiating stimuli under anxiety.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Anxiety Research
Background:
- Individuals with anxiety disorders often overgeneralize fear to non-fearful stimuli.
- The neural mechanisms underlying this overgeneralization remain poorly understood.
- Understanding generalization is crucial for treating anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the neural basis of anxiety-induced overgeneralization in humans.
- To examine the role of the hippocampus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in generalization under threat.
Main Methods:
- Healthy subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a behavioral pattern separation (BPS) task.
- Encoding and retrieval of novel objects occurred during periods of safety and threat (unpredictable shocks).
- Participants discriminated between new, old, and altered images during retrieval.
Main Results:
- The dlPFC exhibited increased activity for altered images during threat compared to safety.
- The hippocampus did not show significant differences in activity related to threat during retrieval.
- dlPFC activity during threat retrieval positively correlated with accuracy for altered items.
Conclusions:
- Overgeneralization in anxiety may stem from an impaired ability to recruit the dlPFC.
- The dlPFC appears critical for cognitive control and discrimination between similar stimuli under threat.
- Anxiety-related overgeneralization might reflect a deficit in dlPFC-mediated cognitive control.
