Mental imagery can generate and regulate acquired differential fear conditioned reactivity

Steven G Greening; Tae-Ho Lee; Lauryn Burleigh; Laurent Grégoire; Tyler Robinson; Xinrui Jiang; Mara Mather; Jonas Kaplan

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-05019-y

Mental imagery can generate and regulate acquired differential fear conditioned reactivity

Sci Rep. 2022 Jan 19;12(1):997. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-05019-y.

Authors

Steven G Greening^{1

2

3}, Tae-Ho Lee^{4

5}, Lauryn Burleigh⁶, Laurent Grégoire^{6

7}, Tyler Robinson⁶, Xinrui Jiang⁶, Mara Mather^{8

5

9}, Jonas Kaplan¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, R3T 2N2, Canada. steven.greening@umanitoba.ca.
² Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA. steven.greening@umanitoba.ca.
³ Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA. steven.greening@umanitoba.ca.
⁴ Department of Psychology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA.
⁵ Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.
⁶ Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA.
⁷ Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA.
⁸ Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.
⁹ Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.
¹⁰ Brain and Creativity Institute, Dornsife College of Letters Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.

Abstract

Mental imagery is an important tool in the cognitive control of emotion. The present study tests the prediction that visual imagery can generate and regulate differential fear conditioning via the activation and prioritization of stimulus representations in early visual cortices. We combined differential fear conditioning with manipulations of viewing and imagining basic visual stimuli in humans. We discovered that mental imagery of a fear-conditioned stimulus compared to imagery of a safe conditioned stimulus generated a significantly greater conditioned response as measured by self-reported fear, the skin conductance response, and right anterior insula activity (experiment 1). Moreover, mental imagery effectively down- and up-regulated the fear conditioned responses (experiment 2). Multivariate classification using the functional magnetic resonance imaging data from retinotopically defined early visual regions revealed significant decoding of the imagined stimuli in V2 and V3 (experiment 1) but significantly reduced decoding in these regions during imagery-based regulation (experiment 2). Together, the present findings indicate that mental imagery can generate and regulate a differential fear conditioned response via mechanisms of the depictive theory of imagery and the biased-competition theory of attention. These findings also highlight the potential importance of mental imagery in the manifestation and treatment of psychological illnesses.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Conditioning, Classical*
Electric Stimulation
Fear / psychology*
Female
Galvanic Skin Response
Humans
Imagination*
Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods
Male

Grants and funding

R01 AG025340/AG/NIA NIH HHS/United States