Temporal dynamics of emotional responding: amygdala recovery predicts emotional traits

Schuyler, B. S., Kral, T. R. A., Jacquart, J., Burghy, C. A., Weng, H. Y., Perlman, D. M., Bachhuber, D. R. W., Rosenkranz, M. A., MacCoon, D. G., van Reekum, C. M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1516-1101, Lutz, A. and Davidson, R. J. (2014) Temporal dynamics of emotional responding: amygdala recovery predicts emotional traits. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9 (2). pp. 176-181. ISSN 1749-5024 doi: 10.1093/scan/nss131

Abstract/Summary

An individual’s affective style is influenced by many things, including the manner in which an individual responds to an emotional challenge. Emotional response is composed of a number of factors, two of which are the initial reactivity to an emotional stimulus and the subsequent recovery once the stimulus terminates or ceases to be relevant. However, most neuroimaging studies examining emotional processing in humans focus on the magnitude of initial reactivity to a stimulus rather than the prolonged response. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the time course of amygdala activity in healthy adults in response to presentation of negative images. We split the amygdala time course into an initial reactivity period and a recovery period beginning after the offset of the stimulus. We find that initial reactivity in the amygdala does not predict trait measures of affective style. Conversely, amygdala recovery shows predictive power such that slower amygdala recovery from negative images predicts greater trait neuroticism, in addition to lower levels of likability of a set of social stimuli (neutral faces). These data underscore the importance of taking into account temporal dynamics when studying affective processing using neuroimaging.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/30903
Identification Number/DOI	10.1093/scan/nss131
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Neuroscience Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Psychopathology and Affective Neuroscience
Uncontrolled Keywords	amygdala fMRI emotion time course chronometry
Publisher	Oxford University Press
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