Controllability Modulates the Anticipatory Response in the Human Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex

Abstract

Research has consistently shown that control is critical to psychological functioning, with perceived lack of control considered to play a crucial role in the manifestation of symptoms in psychiatric disorders. In a model of behavioral control based on non-human animal work, Maier et al. (2006) posited that the presence of control activates areas of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which in turn inhibit the normative stress response in the dorsal raphe nucleus and amygdala. To test Maier’s model in humans, we investigated the effects of control over potent aversive stimuli by presenting video clips of snakes to 21 snake phobics who were otherwise healthy with no comorbid psychopathologies. Based on prior research documenting that disrupted neural processing during the anticipation of adverse events can be influenced by different forms of cognitive processing such as perceptions of control, analyses focused on the anticipatory activity preceding the videos. We found that phobics exhibited greater vmPFC activity during the anticipation of snake videos when they had control over whether the videos were presented as compared to when they had no control over the presentation of the videos. In addition, observed functional connectivity between the vmPFC and the amygdala is consistent with previous work documenting vmPFC inhibition of the amygdala. Our results provide evidence to support the extension of Maier’s model of behavioral control to include anticipatory function in humans.

The neurobiology of emotion regulation in posttraumatic stress disorder: Amygdala downregulation via real‐time fMRI neurofeedback

“…This finding indicates that when patients with PTSD are attempting to downregulate the amygdala, a concomitant increase in connectivity between the emotionally reactive amygdala and emotion regulatory dlPFC and dmPFC regions is observed [Admon et al, 2013;Etkin et al, 2011Etkin et al, , 2015. Also utilizing gPPI, Kerr et al [2012] report increased functional connectivity between the vmPFC and amygdala when patients had control over emotional stimuli, where the authors suggest vmPFC inhibition of amygdala processing involving emotional arousal/anticipation. Notably, Scheinost et al (2013) report increased resting-state connectivity of the dlPFC and decreased limbic network connectivity as a result of rt-fMRI-nf, which was associated with a change in contamination anxiety unique to the experimental group.…”

“…We followed standard a gPPI analysis protocol , which has been previously published with regard to amygdala connectivity by Paret et al [2016b] and Kerr et al [2012] Task regressors-regulate, view, and neutralwere convolved with the standard hemodynamic response function. Here, our objective was to observe changes in task-dependent amygdala connectivity during neurofeedback training.…”

Exploring the Neurocircuitry Underpinning Predictability of Threat in Soldiers with PTSD Compared to Deployment Exposed Controls

“…Given a priori hypotheses based on prior work [16-18, 23, 54-56], an anatomical mask was used to restrict group level analyses to the prefrontal cortex (PFC), cingulate cortex, inferior parietal lobule, temporal cortex, insula, amygdala, and hippocampus to reduce the number of voxel-wise comparisons. T -test comparisons of the differential response to predictable minus unpredictable threat ( i.e.…”

Initial and sustained brain responses to threat anticipation in blood-injection-injury phobia

“…This region has generally been suggested to integrate emotional and cognitive processing (Pessoa, 2008), and seems to be important for appraisal and regulation of emotionally relevant situations (Amodio and Frith, 2006, Hermann et al, 2007, Kalisch et al, 2006, Kerr et al, 2012, Ochsner and Gross, 2005), also with regard to specific phobia (Del Casale et al, 2012, Ipser et al, 2013, Linares et al, 2012). Additionally, mPFC is part of the so-called default mode network under baseline and resting state conditions, and is involved in introspection as well as self-referential mental activity (Raichle, 2015, Raichle et al, 2001).…”