Interaction between the prefrontal and visual cortices supports subjective fear

It has been reported that threatening and non-threatening visual stimuli can be distinguished based on the multi-voxel patterns of haemodynamic activity in the human ventral visual stream. Do these findings mean that there may be evolutionarily hardwired mechanisms within early perception, for the fast and automatic detection of threat, and maybe even for the generation of the subjective experience of fear? In this human neuroimaging study, we presented participants ('fear' group: N = 30; 'no fear' group: N = 30) with 2700 images of animals that could trigger subjective fear or not as a function of the individual's idiosyncratic 'fear profiles' (i.e. fear ratings of animals reported by a given participant). We provide evidence that the ventral visual stream may represent affectively neutral visual features that are statistically associated with fear ratings of participants, without representing the subjective experience of fear itself. More specifically, we show that patterns of haemodynamic activity predictive of a specific 'fear profile' can be observed in the ventral visual stream whether a participant reports being afraid of the stimuli or not. Further, we found that the multivariate information synchronization between ventral visual areas and prefrontal regions distinguished participants who reported being subjectively afraid of the stimuli from those who did not. Together, these findings support the view that the subjective experience of fear may depend on the relevant visual information triggering implicit metacognitive mechanisms in the prefrontal cortex. This article is part of the theme issue 'Sensing and feeling: an integrative approach to sensory processing and emotional experience'.