scholarly journals The effect of modifying automatic action tendencies on overt avoidance behaviors.

Emotion ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 478-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nader Amir ◽  
Jennie M. Kuckertz ◽  
Sadia Najmi
2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 490-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinout W. Wiers ◽  
Carolin Eberl ◽  
Mike Rinck ◽  
Eni S. Becker ◽  
Johannes Lindenmeyer

Addiction ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 105 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinout W. Wiers ◽  
Mike Rinck ◽  
Robert Kordts ◽  
Katrijn Houben ◽  
Fritz Strack

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinout Wiers ◽  
Mike Rinck ◽  
Robert Kordts ◽  
Esther Van den Wildenberg ◽  
Fritz Strack

2018 ◽  
Vol 192 ◽  
pp. 50-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Mehl ◽  
Lara Mueller-Wieland ◽  
David Mathar ◽  
Annette Horstmann

eLife ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Bramson ◽  
Hanneke EM den Ouden ◽  
Ivan Toni ◽  
Karin Roelofs

Control over emotional action tendencies is essential for everyday interactions. This cognitive function fails occasionally during socially challenging situations, and systematically in social psychopathologies. We delivered dual-site phase-coupled brain stimulation to facilitate theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling between frontal regions known to implement that form of control, while neuropsychologically healthy human male participants were challenged to control their automatic action tendencies in a social–emotional approach/avoidance-task. Participants had increased control over their emotional action tendencies, depending on the relative phase and dose of the intervention. Concurrently measured fMRI effects of task and stimulation indicated that the intervention improved control by increasing the efficacy of anterior prefrontal inhibition over the sensorimotor cortex. This enhancement of emotional action control provides causal evidence for phase-amplitude coupling mechanisms guiding action selection during emotional-action control. Generally, the finding illustrates the potential of physiologically-grounded interventions aimed at reducing neural noise in cerebral circuits where communication relies on phase-amplitude coupling.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 977-988
Author(s):  
Saskia B. J. Koch ◽  
Alessandra Galli ◽  
Inge Volman ◽  
Reinoud Kaldewaij ◽  
Ivan Toni ◽  
...  

Social–emotional cues, such as affective vocalizations and emotional faces, automatically elicit emotional action tendencies. Adaptive social–emotional behavior depends on the ability to control these automatic action tendencies. It remains unknown whether neural control over automatic action tendencies is supramodal or relies on parallel modality-specific neural circuits. Here, we address this largely unexplored issue in humans. We consider neural circuits supporting emotional action control in response to affective vocalizations, using an approach–avoidance task known to reliably index control over emotional action tendencies elicited by emotional faces. We isolate supramodal neural contributions to emotional action control through a conjunction analysis of control-related neural activity evoked by auditory and visual affective stimuli, the latter from a previously published data set obtained in an independent sample. We show that the anterior pFC (aPFC) supports control of automatic action tendencies in a supramodal manner, that is, triggered by either emotional faces or affective vocalizations. When affective vocalizations are heard and emotional control is required, the aPFC supports control through negative functional connectivity with the posterior insula. When emotional faces are seen and emotional control is required, control relies on the same aPFC territory downregulating the amygdala. The findings provide evidence for a novel mechanism of emotional action control with a hybrid hierarchical architecture, relying on a supramodal node (aPFC) implementing an abstract goal by modulating modality-specific nodes (posterior insula, amygdala) involved in signaling motivational significance of either affective vocalizations or faces.


Author(s):  
Laura Sagliano ◽  
Raffaele Nappo ◽  
Mario Liotti ◽  
Mariarosaria Fiorenza ◽  
Chiara Gargiulo ◽  
...  

The processing of health-related stimuli can be biased by health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity but, at the moment, it is far from clear whether health-related stimuli can affect motor readiness or the ability to inhibit action. In this preliminary study, we assessed whether different levels of health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity affect disposition to action in response to positive and negative health-related stimuli in non-clinical individuals. An emotional go/no-go task was devised to test action disposition in response to positive (wellness-related), and negative (disease-related) stimuli in non-clinical participants who also underwent well-validated self-report measures of health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity. The main results showed that both health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity biased participants’ responses. Importantly, safety-seeking and avoidance behaviors differently affected action disposition in response to positive and negative stimuli. These preliminary results support the idea that health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity could determine a hypervigilance for health-related information with a different perturbation of response control depending on the valence of the stimuli. Health anxiety and health anxiety disorder do form a continuum; thus, capturing different action tendencies to health-related stimuli could represent a valuable complementary tool to detect processing biases in persons who might develop a clinical condition.


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