| Title: | Chemosensory anxiety cues enhance the perception of fearful faces - An fMRI study |
| Author(s): | Wudarczyk OA; Kohn N; Bergs R; Goerlich KS; Gur RE; Turetsky B; Schneider F; Habel U; |
| Address: | "Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-BRAIN Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships: Decoding the Human Brain at systemic levels, Forschungszentrum Julich GmbH and RWTH Aachen University, Julich, Germany.. Electronic address: owudarczyk@gmail.com. Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-BRAIN Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships: Decoding the Human Brain at systemic levels, Forschungszentrum Julich GmbH and RWTH Aachen University, Julich, Germany.; Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-BRAIN Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships: Decoding the Human Brain at systemic levels, Forschungszentrum Julich GmbH and RWTH Aachen University, Julich, Germany. Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA" |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.09.002 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1095-9572 (Electronic) 1053-8119 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Recent evidence suggests that humans can communicate emotion via chemosensory signals. Olfactory cues signaling anxiety can bias the perception of ambiguous stimuli, but the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of this effect are currently unknown. Here, we investigated the brain responses to subtle changes in facial expressions in response to anxiety chemosensory cues. Ten healthy individuals donated their sweat in two situations: while anticipating an important oral examination (anxiety condition) and during physical exercise (control condition). Subsequently, 24 participants completed a parametrically morphed (neutral to fearful) emotion recognition task under exposure to the olfactory cues of anxiety and sports, in the fMRI scanner. Behaviorally, the participants rated more discernible fearful faces as more fearful and neutral faces as more neutral under exposure to the anxiety cues. For brain response, under exposure to the anxiety cues, increased fearfulness of the face corresponded to increased activity in the left insula and the left middle occipital gyrus extending into fusiform gyrus. Moreover, with higher subjective ratings of facial fearfulness, participants additionally showed increased activity in the left hippocampus. These results suggest that chemosensory anxiety cues facilitate processing of socially relevant fearful stimuli and boost memory retrieval due to enhanced emotional context" |
| Keywords: | Adolescent Adult Anxiety/*metabolism Brain Mapping/*methods Cerebral Cortex/*physiology *Facial Expression Facial Recognition/*physiology Fear/*physiology Female Hippocampus/physiology Humans Magnetic Resonance Imaging Male Olfactory Perception/*physiolog; |
| Notes: | "MedlineWudarczyk, Olga A Kohn, Nils Bergs, Rene Goerlich, Katharina S Gur, Raquel E Turetsky, Bruce Schneider, Frank Habel, Ute eng 2016/09/07 Neuroimage. 2016 Dec; 143:214-222. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.09.002. Epub 2016 Sep 2" |
