@article{ref1,
title="If it bleeds, it leads: Separating threat from mere negativity",
journal="Social cognitive and affective neuroscience",
year="2014",
author="Kveraga, Kestutis and Boshyan, Jasmine and Adams, Reginald B. and Mote, Jasmine and Betz, Nicole and Ward, Noreen and Hadjikhani, Nouchine and Bar, Moshe and Barrett, Lisa Feldman",
volume="10",
number="1",
pages="28-35",
abstract="Most theories of emotion hold that negative stimuli are threatening and aversive. Yet in everyday experiences some negative sights (e.g., car wrecks) attract curiosity, while others repel (e.g. a weapon pointed in our face). To examine the diversity in negative stimuli, we employed four classes of visual images (Direct Threat, Indirect Threat, Merely Negative, and Neutral) in a set of behavioral and fMRI studies. Participants reliably discriminated between the images, evaluating Direct Threat stimuli most quickly, and Merely Negative images most slowly.Threat images evoked greater and earlier BOLD activations in the amygdala and periaqueductal gray, structures implicated in representing and responding to the motivational salience of stimuli. Conversely, the merely negative images evoked larger BOLD signal in the parahippocampal, retrosplenial, and medial prefrontal cortices, regions which have been implicated in contextual association processing. Ventrolateral, as well as medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortices were activated by both threatening and merely negative images. In conclusion, negative visual stimuli can repel or attract scrutiny depending on their current threat potential, which is assessed by dynamic shifts in large-scale brain network activity.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1749-5016",
doi="10.1093/scan/nsu007",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsu007"
}