Journal
PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY
Volume 55, Issue 10, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13206
Keywords
ERPs; NPU; shock; startle blink; threat; unpredictable
Funding
- National Institute of Mental Health [K23MH105553]
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Cognitive affective neuroscience tasks that are straightforward to administer, measure key constructs of interest, and can be used in different lab settings and with multiple psychophysiological methods can lead to a more complete understanding of experimental effects. The no-threat, predictable threat, unpredictable threat (NPU-threat) task assesses constructs of interest to both clinical and basic affective science literatures, is relatively brief to administer, and has been used across labs with a number of different measurements (e.g., startle eyeblink, fMRI, corrugator response, subjective ratings). ERPs provide another means of assessing neurobiological reactivity during the NPU-threat task, but to date such measures have been underutilized. That is, no study has yet evaluated cue-elicited ERPs in the NPU-threat task. Here, cue-elicited ERPs were assessed in 78 participants who completed a version of the NPU-threat task previously shown to reliably moderate startle eyeblink amplitudes. Results showed larger P2 amplitudes for unpredictable versus predictable trials, increased P3s and late positive potentials for threatening versus no-threat trials, as well as larger stimulus preceding negativities for threatening versus no-threat trials (driven primarily by predictable threat cues). In line with prior work, we observed enhanced startle eyeblink for threatening versus no-threat trials and for unpredictable compared to predictable threat interstimulus intervals. In addition, the probe-elicited P3 was suppressed for predictable and unpredictable compared to no-threat trials. Therefore, cue-elicited ERPs, which can be recorded alongside other measures in the NPU-threat task (e.g., startle), may provide useful indices of temporally distinct stages of predictable and unpredictable threat processing.
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