Prefrontal control of attention to threat

Abstract

Attentional control refers to the regulatory processes that ensure that our actions are in accordance with our goals. Dual-system accounts view temperament as consisting of both individual variation in emotionality (e.g., trait anxiety) and variation in regulatory attentional mechanisms that act to modulate emotionality. Increasing evidence links trait variation in attentional control to clinical mood and anxiety disorder symptoms, independent of trait emotionality. Attentional biases to threat have been robustly linked to mood and anxiety disorders. However, the role of variation in attentional control in influencing such biases, and the neural underpinnings of trait variation in attentional control, are unknown. Here, we show that individual differences in trait attentional control, even when accounting for trait and state anxiety, are related to the magnitude of an attentional blink (AB) following threat-related targets. Moreover, we demonstrate that activity in dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), is observed specifically in relation to control of attention over threatening stimuli, in line with neural theories of attentional control, such as guided activation theory. These results have key implications for neurocognitive theories of attentional bias and emotional resilience.

Keywords: anxiety; attentional blink; biased competition; cognitive control; emotion; fMRI; facial expression; prefrontal cortex.

Figure 1

Schematic representation of the task used. BOLD signal was modeled from the onset of each trial and included the response phase. (see text for details).

Figure 2

Locations of a priori defined ROIs. Transverse slices for the peak voxel of each of the fROI's are shown. Prefrontal ROIs are rendered on to the anterior surface of a whole brain.

Figure 3

Behavioral performance for (A) whole sample (n = 19)—T2 scenes task in the dual task condition as a function of the SOA between T1 (the face) and T2 (the scene), and (B) mean T1/T2 performance (±S.E.) for short and long SOAs as a function of T1 expression in high (n = 7) and low ACS (n = 7) groups. The significant effects are marked with an asterisk.

Figure 4

Brain activity in the independently-defined DLPFC (green sphere based on previous coordinates) and STS (activity cluster based on localizer scan) regions of interest for fear blinked > unblinked trials. (A) Shows average unstandardized beta values in DLPFC, and (B) in STS, across participants as a function of attentional control score across the entire sample (n = 19). (C) Shows mean (±S.E.) activity in DLPFC, and (D) in STS for each AB trial type of the high (n = 7) and low (n = 7) ACS groups. The significant main effects and interactions are marked with an asterisk.