Conscious and non-conscious conditioning in anxiety

Anne Richards, Naz Derakshan & Leor Shoker

School of PsychologyBirkbeck College

Amygdala and prefrontal activity in anxiety Amygdala & hippocampus active for attended and unattended emotion, but may be

stronger for unattended (Critchley et al, 2000; Habel et al., 2007; Keightly et al., 2003; Morris et al., 1998; Walen et al., 1998).

Prefrontal cortical activity is associated with attempts to regulate the outcome of attentional, interpretative and associative processes triggered by threat cue (e.g., Kalisch et al., 2006; Milad et al., 2007).

Outcome of attentional competition between neutral task and threat distractor possibly determined by relative strength of modulatory signals from PFC (supporting task-relevant processing) and amygdala (supporting threat stimuli) (Bishop, 2007).

Unmasked Stroop Masked Stroop

Unmasked Conditioning √ X

Masked Conditioning X √

Predictions:

1. Amygdala activity for unmasked conditioning/Stroop and for masked conditiong/Stroop. More activity for anxious. More activity for masked?

2. Prefrontal activity for unmasked conditoning/Stroop, but larger for non-anxious

3. Behavioural effect for high-anxious for Congruent conditioning/Stroop

4. Affective ratings of masked and unmasked stimuli to check for conditioning success

Amygdala active both groups, stronger in anxiousPrefrontal: more active non-anxious

Amygdala active both groups, stronger in anxious

Richards & Blanchette (2004; submitted), Richards et al. (2007, submitted)

Design Behavioural- Pre-test for anxiety (high vs. low)- Masked and Unmasked Conditioning (fMRI)

Masked and Unmasked Stroop (fMRI)

- 2 (masked vs. unmasked) x 2 (negatively- vs neutrally-conditioned)

Affective Ratings

nimburnimur

nimburnimur

Negative Neutral

DesignSpecs:

Conditioning (50 negative, 50 neutral).

•duration ~= 15 mins

Stroop task

• duration ~= 16 mins

fMRI

• Whole brain fMRI (TR=3, TE=50ms, 3x3x3mm resolution)

• ISI: 4-6 seconds

• TR: 2282 ms/32 slices

• 160 trials

• 40 per condition

• Block design

•Collecting behavioural Stroop data

Affective Ratings

• Awareness Checkduration ~= 15 mins

Participants:

• 32, right-handed, 16 high and 16

low-anxious (pre-screened)

• recruited from Birkbeck Participant

Panel

• No clinical history