Threat and reward imminence processing in the human brain.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Affective Neuroscience

Background:

• Aversive and appetitive processing in the human brain are typically studied in controlled, static environments.
• Understanding the distinct or overlapping neural circuits for processing threat and reward remains a challenge.

Approach:

• Investigated the dynamics of aversive and appetitive processing during threat-avoidance and reward-seeking tasks.
• Characterized the temporal evolution of neural responses during periods of threat or reward imminence.
• Utilized neuroimaging to identify brain regions exhibiting anticipatory and imminence-related activity.

Key Points:

• Discovered temporally increasing ("ramping") responses related to imminence in subcortical (bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, periaqueductal gray, ventral striatum) and cortical (dorsal anterior insula, anterior midcingulate) brain regions.
• Observed that the ventral striatum processes both reward anticipation and threat imminence.
• Identified a main effect of arousal across multiple brain regions, indicating shared processing mechanisms.

Conclusions:

• Brain circuits dynamically engage in temporally-evolving, imminence-related processing for both aversive and appetitive stimuli.
• Distributed neural circuits process biologically relevant information irrespective of emotional valence.
• Network analysis supports the dynamic engagement of brain circuits during threat and reward processing.