Dissociation of spatio-temporal brain responses to threat-related faces depending on attention and source of threat

• Applicants: Dr. Sebastian Schindler; Professor Dr. Thomas Straube
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 556345157

Threat-related faces are prioritized by the human brain and evoke distinct neuronal responses, such as increased components of the event-related potential (ERP) based on electroencephalography (EEG) and increased hemodynamic responses based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, until now, no studies have investigated how the modulation of different components of the ERP corresponds to the functional neuroanatomy observed in fMRI data depending on attentional conditions and sources of threat relevance of faces. This project aims to investigate these questions in a series of three studies with simultaneous acquisition of EEG and fMRI responses to fearful facial expressions (study I), faces associated with negative biographical knowledge (study II), and fear-conditioned faces (study III), as compared to neutral conditions. In each study, stimuli will be presented under three different task conditions that vary the focus of feature-based attention on either perceptual distracters, or emotion-irrelevant facial features, or threat-relevant facial features. Corresponding modulations in ERP and fMRI data will be examined based on the results of the task-dependent structure of effects to threat-related compared to neutral faces and ERP single trial-informed analysis of FMRI data. We expect that the project will provide a significant contribution to the debate under which conditions and when and where modulations of brain activation to threat-related faces occur and, therefore, lead to a better understanding of the chronometry of brain responses to negative visual stimuli.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants