RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Extinction-resistant attention to long-term conditioned threat is indexed by selective visuocortical alpha suppression in humans
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 533141
DO 10.1101/533141
A1 Christian Panitz
A1 Andreas Keil
A1 Erik M. Mueller
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/05/02/533141.abstract
AB While ERP studies have shown heightened early visual attention to conditioned threat, it is unknown whether this attentional prioritization is sustained throughout later processing stages and whether it is robust to extinction. To investigate sustained visual attention, we assessed visuocortical alpha suppression in response to conditioned and extinguished threat. We reanalysed data from N = 87 male participants that had shown successful long-term threat conditioning and extinction in self reports and physiological measures in a two-day conditioning paradigm. The current EEG time-frequency analyses on recall test data on Day 2 revealed that previously threat-conditioned vs. safety cues evoked stronger occipital alpha power suppression from 600 to 1200 ms. Notably, this suppression was resistant to previous extinction. The present study showed for the first time that threat conditioning enhances sustained modulation of visuocortical attention to threat in the long term. Long-term stability and extinction resistance of alpha suppression suggest a crucial role of visuocortical attention mechanisms in the maintenance of learned fears.