Social aversive generalization learning sharpens the tuning of visuocortical neurons to facial identity cues

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Abstract

Defensive system activation promotes heightened perception of threat signals, and excessive attention to threat signals has been discussed as a contributory factor in the etiology of anxiety disorders. However, a mechanistic account of attentional modulation during fear-relevant processes, especially during fear generalization remains elusive. To test the hypothesis that social fear generalization prompts sharpened tuning in the visuocortical representation of social threat cues, 67 healthy participants underwent differential fear conditioning, followed by a generalization test in which participants viewed faces varying in similarity with the threat-associated face. We found that generalization of social threat sharpens visuocortical tuning of social threat cues, whereas ratings of fearfulness showed generalization, linearly decreasing with decreasing similarity to the threat-associated face. Moreover, individuals who reported greater anxiety in social situations also showed heightened sharpened tuning of visuocortical neurons to facial identity cues, indicating the behavioral relevance of visuocortical tuning during generalization learning.

Data availability

Data sets, the code for all analyses, as well as the code for the production of table 1-4, figure 3, figure 5 and figure 7 are available under https://osf.io/4965f/

The following data sets were generated

1. Stegmann Y
2. Ahrens L
3. Pauli P
4. Keil A
5. Wieser MJ
(2020) Social aversive generalization learning sharpens the tuning of visuocortical neurons to facial identity cues
Open Science Framework, 4965f.

https://osf.io/4965f/

Article and author information

Author details

Yannik Stegmann

Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

For correspondence
yannik.stegmann@uni-wuerzburg.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0933-8492
Lea Ahrens

Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Paul Pauli

Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Andreas Keil

Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, University of Florida, Gainesville, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Matthias J Wieser

Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (44541416 - TRR-58,projects B05 of the 2nd funding period and B01 of the 3rd funding period)

Paul Pauli
Matthias J Wieser

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: Prior to participation, written informed consent was obtained from each participant. The study was approved by the ethics review board of the University of Würzburg. (87/13).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.