Brain, body, and cognition: neural, physiological and self-report correlates of phobic and normative fear. Biol Psychol 2014 Apr;98:59-69
Date
02/25/2014Pubmed ID
24561099Pubmed Central ID
PMC4251669DOI
10.1016/j.biopsycho.2013.12.011Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84899933123 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 42 CitationsAbstract
The phobic fear response appears to resemble an intense form of normal threat responding that can be induced in a nonthreatening situation. However, normative and phobic fear are rarely contrasted directly, thus the degree to which these two types of fear elicit similar neural and bodily responses is not well understood. To examine biological correlates of normal and phobic fear, 21 snake phobic and 21 nonphobic controls saw videos of slithering snakes, attacking snakes and fish in an event-related fMRI design. Simultaneous eletrodermal, pupillary, and self-reported affective responses were collected. Nonphobic fear activated a network of threat-responsive brain regions and involved pupillary dilation, electrodermal response and self-reported affect selective to the attacking snakes. Phobic fear recruited a large array of brain regions including those active in normal fear plus additional structures and also engendered increased pupil dilation, electrodermal and self-reported responses that were greater to any snake versus fish. Importantly, phobics showed greater between- and within-subject concordance among neural, electrodermal, pupillary, and subjective report measures. These results suggest phobic responses recruit overlapping but more strongly activated and more extensive networks of brain activity as compared to normative fear, and are characterized by greater concordance among neural activation, peripheral physiology and self-report. It is yet unclear whether concordance is unique to psychopathology, or rather simply an indicator of the intense fear seen in the phobic response, but these results underscore the importance of synchrony between brain, body, and cognition during the phobic reaction.
Author List
Schaefer HS, Larson CL, Davidson RJ, Coan JAAuthor
Christine Larson PhD Associate Professor in the Psychology department at University of Wisconsin - MilwaukeeMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdultBrain
Fear
Female
Functional Neuroimaging
Galvanic Skin Response
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Phobic Disorders
Pupil
Self Report
Young Adult
