Implicit threat learning involves the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum

Charlene L M Lam; Clive H Y Wong; Markus Junghöfer; Kati Roesmann

doi:10.1016/j.ijchp.2022.100357

Implicit threat learning involves the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum

Int J Clin Health Psychol. 2023 Apr-Jun;23(2):100357. doi: 10.1016/j.ijchp.2022.100357. Epub 2022 Nov 23.

Authors

Charlene L M Lam^{1

2}, Clive H Y Wong^{2

3

4}, Markus Junghöfer⁵, Kati Roesmann^{5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Clinical Psychology and Affective Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
³ Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Human Neuroscience, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
⁴ Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
⁵ Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University of Münster, Germany.
⁶ Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Siegen, Germany.

Abstract

Background/objective: Most studies investigating the neural correlates of threat learning were carried out using an explicit Pavlovian conditioning paradigm where declarative knowledge on contingencies between conditioned (CS) and unconditioned stimuli (US) is acquired. The current study aimed at understanding the neural correlates of threat conditioning when contingency awareness is limited or even absent.

Method: We conducted an fMRI report of threat learning in an implicit associative learning paradigm called multi-CS conditioning, in which a number of faces were associated with aversive screams (US) such that participants could not report contingencies between the faces and the screams.

Results: The univariate results showed support for the recruitment of threat-related regions including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the cerebellum during acquisition. Further analyses by the multivariate representational similarity technique identified learning-dependent changes in the bilateral dlPFC.

Conclusion: Our findings support the involvement of the dlPFC and the cerebellum in threat conditioning that occurs with highly limited or even absent contingency awareness.

Keywords: Implicit, fear conditioning, cerebellum, contingency awareness; Multi-cs conditioning.