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Neuronale Mechanismen der Verarbeitung emotionaler Informationen aus Gesichtern und Stimmen bei Sozialer Phobie

Fachliche Zuordnung Persönlichkeitspsychologie, Klinische und Medizinische Psychologie, Methoden
Allgemeine, Kognitive und Mathematische Psychologie
Förderung Förderung von 2009 bis 2017
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 69199027
 
Erstellungsjahr 2017

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

Several lines of research propose prioritized processing of threat-related social signals in healthy subjects and, even more pronounced, in patients suffering from social anxiety disorder (SAD). This research project systematically investigated spatio-temporal brain responses to emotional facial and vocal expressions under different attentional conditions in healthy individuals and patients suffering from SAD. In the course of the project, we developed a new battery of suited social stimuli and novel designs for the investigation of attentional effects on the neural correlates of the processing of emotional faces and voices. The analyses of these data yielded several novel findings concerning the role of attention, stimulus intensity and social anxiety for the understanding of neural mechanisms of processing emotional facial expression and prosody. In particular, we revealed that threatening voices are not processed automatically, since both visual and auditory load conditions prevented increased responses in amygdala and auditory cortex to angry vs neutral prosody. Furthermore, we found that intensity but not threat-relevance of facial expressions is associated with amygdala activation. Activation in the amygdala followed a U-shaped function with strongest activation to high intensity angry and happy expressions. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) we also showed that emotional intensity modulates early ERPs to facial expressions regardless of perceptual load. Specifically, the N170 amplitude showed a U-shaped pattern with strongest amplitudes in response to high intensity angry and happy expressions. Currently we further analyze simultaneously acquired fMRI/ERP data for several experiments with emotional faces and voices in healthy individuals and patients with SAD. In a combined EEG-fMRI study using facial expressions varying in emotional intensity, ERP analysis indicated intensity sensitivity within early (100 to 130ms) latencies. Expression effects in the EEG resembled those found in conventional fMRI analysis showing U-shaped response patterns with largest amplitudes for high intensity emotional expressions. On a single trial basis, integrated EEG-fMRI analysis revealed a significant correlation between early EEG activity and specifically occipital face area (rOFA), suggesting early facial expression effects in both temporal and topographical neural responses.We also showed that sound intensity modulates amygdala activation to angry prosody in SAD. Only loud and angry voices differentiated between healthy subjects and patients with SAD. Using ERPs, a further study revealed a sustained attentional bias to behaviorally relevant angry faces in SAD. Taken together, findings clearly show that brain responses to social threat signals are modulated by attentional resources, intensity of stimuli and social anxiety. Brain responses to social threat depend on processing resources, even though effects are less pronounced for early ERPs as compared to late ERPs and fMRI data. Furthermore, at least in healthy subjects, intensity of emotional signals is a better predictor of brain responses than stimulus valence. Finally, patients with SAD show specifically increased brain responses to social threat signals. If stimuli are behaviorally relevant, patients suffering from SAD are characterized by sustained prioritized processing of social threat signals.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

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