Overestimating the intensity of negative feelings in autobiographical memory: evidence from the 9/11 attack and COVID-19 pandemic.

When recalling autobiographical events, people not only retrieve event details but also the feelings they experienced. The current study examined whether people are able to consistently recall the intensity of past feelings associated with two consequential and negatively valenced events, i.e. the 9/11 attack (N = 769) and the COVID-19 pandemic (N = 726). By comparing experienced and recalled intensities of negative feelings, we discovered that people systematically recall a higher intensity of negative feelings than initially reported - overestimating the intensity of past negative emotional experiences. The COVID-19 dataset also revealed that individuals who experienced greater improvement in emotional well-being displayed smaller biases in recalling their feelings. Across both datasets, the intensity of remembered feelings was correlated with initial feelings and current feelings, but the impact of the current feelings was stronger in the COVID-19 dataset than in the 9/11 dataset. Our results demonstrate that when recalling negative autobiographical events, people tend to overestimate the intensity of prior negative emotional experiences with their degree of bias influenced by current feelings and well-being.

Distributed neural representations of conditioned threat in the human brain.

Detecting and responding to threat engages several neural nodes including the amygdala, hippocampus, insular cortex, and medial prefrontal cortices. Recent propositions call for the integration of more distributed neural nodes that process sensory and cognitive facets related to threat. Integrative, sensitive, and reproducible distributed neural decoders for the detection and response to threat and safety have yet to be established. We combine functional MRI data across varying threat conditioning and negative affect paradigms from 1465 participants with multivariate pattern analysis to investigate distributed neural representations of threat and safety. The trained decoders sensitively and specifically distinguish between threat and safety cues across multiple datasets. We further show that many neural nodes dynamically shift representations between threat and safety. Our results establish reproducible decoders that integrate neural circuits, merging the well-characterized 'threat circuit' with sensory and cognitive nodes, discriminating threat from safety regardless of experimental designs or data acquisition parameters.

Synchronized Incidental Affect Changes Ambiguity Preferences.

Decisions under uncertainty are prevalent, but come under two distinct types. Risk, which has unknown outcomes but known probabilities for those outcomes and ambiguity which contains both unknown outcomes and unknown probabilities. Although there have been several studies linking affect and aversion to ambiguity, there have been no studies that have to identify how changing one's affective response can change their choices. A total of 166 adults ( M = 36.54, SD = 11.80) participated in an online study through Prolific. Participants were presented with a lottery on each trial which varied on its uncertainty type (risky vs ambiguous) and winning characteristics (winning probability and amount). Half of the ambiguous lotteries were paired with an neutral image (e.g., office supplies), while the other half was paired with an emotionally evocative image (e.g., burning house) that was hypothesized to incidentally influence their decisions. As measured by both raw choice data as well as through a computational model, participants were more averse to ambiguity when the lottery was paired with an emotionally evocative image. Follow-up analyses revealed that only lotteries in which the computational model predicted the participant would choose the lottery were affected by the images. This study highlights the phenomenon in which one's awareness of an affective stimulus can alter its impact on their decisions.

Emotion language use in narratives of the 9/11 attacks predicts long-term memory.

Despite considerable cognitive neuroscience research demonstrating that emotions can influence the encoding and consolidation of memory, research has failed to demonstrate a relationship between self-reported ratings of emotions collected soon after a traumatic event and memory for the event over time. This secondary analysis of data from a multisite longitudinal study of memories of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, asked the question of whether emotional language use could predict memory over time. In the 2 weeks following the 9/11 attacks, participants (N = 691; Mage = 36.8; 72% identifying as male; 76% identifying as white) wrote narratives about how they learned of the attacks and the impact of the attacks on them. Language features of these narratives were extracted using the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count program and used to predict three types of memory: (a) event memory accuracy, (b) flashbulb memory consistency, and (c) emotion memory consistency. These outcomes were assessed at the time of writing, 1, 3, and 10 years after the 9/11 attacks. Results of linear mixed-effects models indicate that greater use of negative emotion words in narratives predicts better event memory accuracy 3 and 10 years after the attacks and worse flashbulb memory consistency 10 years after the attacks. However, emotion word use does not predict emotion memory consistency across time. We also examine whether other exploratory linguistic predictors are associated with memory over time. These findings suggest that written language may serve as a potential early indicator of memory over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Pupil Size Encodes Uncertainty during Exploration.

Exploration is an important part of decision making and is crucial to maximizing long-term rewards. Past work has shown that people use different forms of uncertainty to guide exploration. In this study, we investigate the role of the pupil-linked arousal system in uncertainty-guided exploration. We measured participants' (n = 48) pupil dilation while they performed a two-armed bandit task. Consistent with previous work, we found that people adopted a hybrid of directed, random, and undirected exploration, which are sensitive to relative uncertainty, total uncertainty, and value difference between options, respectively. We also found a positive correlation between pupil size and total uncertainty. Furthermore, augmenting the choice model with subject-specific total uncertainty estimates decoded from the pupil size improved predictions of held-out choices, suggesting that people used the uncertainty estimate encoded in pupil size to decide which option to explore. Together, the data shed light on the computations underlying uncertainty-driven exploration. Under the assumption that pupil size reflects locus coeruleus-norepinephrine neuromodulatory activity, these results also extend the theory of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine function in exploration, highlighting its selective role in driving uncertainty-guided random exploration.

Consensus design of a calibration experiment for human fear conditioning.

Fear conditioning is a widely used laboratory model to investigate learning, memory, and psychopathology across species. The quantification of learning in this paradigm is heterogeneous in humans and psychometric properties of different quantification methods can be difficult to establish. To overcome this obstacle, calibration is a standard metrological procedure in which well-defined values of a latent variable are generated in an established experimental paradigm. These intended values then serve as validity criterion to rank methods. Here, we develop a calibration protocol for human fear conditioning. Based on a literature review, series of workshops, and survey of N = 96 experts, we propose a calibration experiment and settings for 25 design variables to calibrate the measurement of fear conditioning. Design variables were chosen to be as theory-free as possible and allow wide applicability in different experimental contexts. Besides establishing a specific calibration procedure, the general calibration process we outline may serve as a blueprint for calibration efforts in other subfields of behavioral neuroscience that need measurement refinement.

Trait somatic anxiety is associated with reduced directed exploration and underestimation of uncertainty.

Anxiety has been related to decreased physical exploration, but past findings on the interaction between anxiety and exploration during decision making were inconclusive. Here we examined how latent factors of trait anxiety relate to different exploration strategies when facing volatility-induced uncertainty. Across two studies (total N = 985), we demonstrated that people used a hybrid of directed, random and undirected exploration strategies, which were respectively sensitive to relative uncertainty, total uncertainty and value difference. Trait somatic anxiety, that is, the propensity to experience physical symptoms of anxiety, was inversely correlated with directed exploration and undirected exploration, manifesting as a lesser likelihood for choosing the uncertain option and reducing choice stochasticity regardless of uncertainty. Somatic anxiety is also associated with underestimation of relative uncertainty. Together, these results reveal the selective role of trait somatic anxiety in modulating both uncertainty-driven and value-driven exploration strategies.

Neither Threat of Shock nor Acute Psychosocial Stress Affects Ambiguity Attitudes.

Decisions under uncertainty can be differentiated into two classes: risky, which has known probabilistic outcomes, and ambiguous, which has unknown probabilistic outcomes. Across a variety of types of decisions, people find ambiguity extremely aversive, subjectively more aversive than risk. It has been shown that the transient sympathetic arousal response to a choice predicts decisions under ambiguity but not risk, and that lifetime stress uniquely predicts attitudes toward ambiguity. Building on these findings, this study explored whether we could bias ambiguity and risk preferences with an arousal or acute stress manipulation that is incidental to the choice in two independent experiments. One experiment induced sympathetic arousal with an anticipatory threat paradigm, and the other manipulated incidental acute stress via a psychosocial stressor. The efficacy of the manipulations was confirmed via pupil dilation and salivary cortisol, respectively. Participants made choices between a guaranteed $5 option and a lottery with either a known (risky) or unknown (ambiguous) probabilistic outcome. Consistent with previous findings, participants were more averse to a given level of ambiguity than to a numerically equal level of risk. However, in contrast to our hypothesis, we found no evidence that transient arousal or acute stress that is incidental to the choice biases ambiguity preferences.

Tag and capture: how salient experiences target and rescue nearby events in memory.

The long-term fate of a memory is not exclusively determined by the events occurring at the moment of encoding. Research at the cellular, circuit, and behavioral levels is beginning to reveal how neurochemical activations in the moments surrounding an event can retroactively and proactively rescue weak memory for seemingly mundane experiences. We review emerging evidence showing enhancement of weakly formed memories encoded minutes to hours before or after a related motivationally relevant experience. We discuss proposed neurobiological mechanisms for strengthening weak memories formed in temporal proximity to a strong event, and how this knowledge could be leveraged to improve memory for information that is prone to forgetting.

Trait Intolerance of Uncertainty Is Associated with Decreased Reappraisal Capacity and Increased Suppression Tendency.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of great uncertainty for the general population and highlights the need to understand how attitudes towards uncertainty may affect well-being. Intolerance of uncertainty is a trait associated with worry, anxiety, and mood disorders. As adaptive emotion regulation supports well-being and mental health, it is possible that intolerance of uncertainty is also associated with the ability and tendency to regulate emotions. However, the relationships between intolerance of uncertainty and widely studied cognitive emotion regulation strategies - such as reappraisal and suppression - have received little attention. In two studies that recruited participants online from the United States, we tested the hypotheses that higher trait intolerance of uncertainty would be associated with greater worry, decreased capacity and tendency to use reappraisal, and increased tendency to use suppression in daily life. Study 1 provided an initial test of our hypotheses. Study 2 was a confirmatory, preregistered study that replicated findings in a young adult sample, demonstrating that scores on the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS) were associated with greater COVID-related worry, decreased capacity to regulate negative emotions on a task that manipulated the use of reappraisal, and greater self-reported use of suppression in daily life. Together, these results indicate that intolerance of uncertainty is associated with the capacity and tendency to use emotion regulation strategies important for well-being. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00115-8.

Temporally and anatomically specific contributions of the human amygdala to threat and safety learning.

Neural plasticity in subareas of the rodent amygdala is widely known to be essential for Pavlovian threat conditioning and safety learning. However, less consistent results have been observed in human neuroimaging studies. Here, we identify and test three important factors that may contribute to these discrepancies: the temporal profile of amygdala response in threat conditioning, the anatomical specificity of amygdala responses during threat conditioning and safety learning, and insufficient power to identify these responses. We combined data across multiple studies using a well-validated human threat conditioning paradigm to examine amygdala involvement during threat conditioning and safety learning. In 601 humans, we show that two amygdala subregions tracked the conditioned stimulus with aversive shock during early conditioning while only one demonstrated delayed responding to a stimulus not paired with shock. Our findings identify cross-species similarities in temporal- and anatomical-specific amygdala contributions to threat and safety learning, affirm human amygdala involvement in associative learning and highlight important factors for future associative learning research in humans.

A Preliminary Test of Novelty-Facilitated Extinction in Individuals With Pathological Anxiety.

Studies with rodents and healthy humans suggest that replacing the expected threat with a novel outcome improves extinction and reduces the return of conditioned fear more effectively than threat omission alone. Because of the potential clinical implications of this finding for exposure-based anxiety treatments, this study tested whether the same was true in individuals with pathological anxiety (i.e., met DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for an anxiety disorder and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this preliminary test of novelty-facilitated extinction, 51 unmedicated individuals with pathological anxiety were randomized to standard extinction (n = 27) or novelty-facilitated extinction (n = 24). Participants returned 24 h later to test extinction recall and fear reinstatement. Skin conductance responses (SCR) were the dependent measure of conditioned fear. Participants in both groups learned the fear association but variably extinguished it. Novelty did not facilitate extinction in this preliminary trial. Findings underscore the importance of translating paradigms from healthy humans to clinical samples, to ensure that new treatment ideas based on advances in basic neuroscience are relevant to patients.

The actor's insight: Actors have comparable interoception but better metacognition than nonactors.

Both accurately sensing our own bodily signals and knowing whether we have accurately sensed them may contribute to a successful emotional life, but there is little evidence on whether these physiological perceptual and metacognitive abilities systematically differ between people. Here, we examined whether actors, who receive substantial training in the production, awareness, and control of emotion, and nonactor controls differed in interoceptive ability (the perception of internal bodily signals) and/or metacognition about interoceptive accuracy (awareness of that perception), and explored potential sources of individual differences in and consequences of these abilities including correlational relationships with state and trait anxiety, proxies for acting ability, and the amount of acting training. Participants performed a heartbeat detection task in which they judged whether tones were played synchronously or delayed relative to their heartbeats, and then rated their metacognitive confidence in that judgment. Cardiac interoceptive accuracy and metacognitive awareness of interoceptive accuracy were independent, and while actors' and controls' interoceptive accuracy was not significantly different, actors had consistently superior metacognitive awareness of interoception. Exploratory analyses additionally suggest that this metacognitive ability may be correlated with measures of acting ability, but not the duration of acting training. Interoceptive accuracy and metacognitive insight into that accuracy appear to be separate abilities, and while actors may be no more accurate in reading their bodies, their metacognitive insight means they know better when they're accurate and when they're not. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A Case for Translation From the Clinic to the Laboratory.

Laboratory procedures have been used for decades as analogues for clinical processes with the goal of improving our understanding of psychological treatments for emotional disorders and identifying strategies to make treatments more effective. This research has often focused on translation from the laboratory to the clinic. Although this approach has notable successes, it has not been seamless. There are many examples of strategies that work in the laboratory that fail to lead to improved outcomes when applied clinically. One possible reason for this gap between experimental and clinical research is a failure to focus on translation from the clinic to the laboratory. Here, we discuss potential benefits of translation from the clinic to the laboratory and provide examples of how this might be implemented. We first consider two well-established laboratory analogues (extinction and cognitive reappraisal), identify critical aspects of the related clinical procedures (exposure and cognitive restructuring) that are missing from these analogues, and propose variations to better capture the clinical process. Second, we discuss two clinical procedures that have more recently been brought into the laboratory (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing and imagery rescripting). We conclude by highlighting potential implications of this proposed shift in focus for translational research.

Survival of the salient: Aversive learning rescues otherwise forgettable memories via neural reactivation and post-encoding hippocampal connectivity.

The effects of aversive events on memory are complex and go beyond the simple enhancement of threatening information. Negative experiences can also rescue related but otherwise forgettable details encoded close in time. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in healthy young adults to examine the brain mechanisms that support this retrograde memory effect. In a two-phase incidental encoding paradigm, participants viewed different pictures of tools and animals before and during Pavlovian fear conditioning. During Phase 1, these images were intermixed with neutral scenes, which provided a unique 'context tag' for this specific phase of encoding. A few minutes later, during Phase 2, new pictures from one category were paired with a mild shock (threat-conditioned stimulus; CS+), while pictures from the other category were not shocked. FMRI analyses revealed that, across-participants, individuals who showed aversive learning-related retroactive memory benefits for Phase 1 CS+ items were also more likely to exhibit three brain effects: first, greater spontaneous reinstatement of the Phase 1 context when participants viewed conceptually-related CS+ items in Phase 2; second, greater successful encoding-related VTA/SN and LC activation for Phase 2 CS+ items; and third, learning-dependent increases in post-encoding hippocampal functional coupling with CS+ category-selective cortex. These biases in hippocampal-cortical connectivity also mediated the relationship between VTA/SN aversive encoding effects and across-participant variability in the retroactive memory benefit. Collectively, our findings suggest that both online and offline brain mechanisms may enable threatening events to preserve memories that acquire new significance in the future.

Prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and threat processing: implications for PTSD.

Posttraumatic stress disorder can be viewed as a disorder of fear dysregulation. An abundance of research suggests that the prefrontal cortex is central to fear processing-that is, how fears are acquired and strategies to regulate or diminish fear responses. The current review covers foundational research on threat or fear acquisition and extinction in nonhuman animals, healthy humans, and patients with posttraumatic stress disorder, through the lens of the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in these processes. Research harnessing advances in technology to further probe the role of the prefrontal cortex in these processes, such as the use of optogenetics in rodents and brain stimulation in humans, will be highlighted, as well other fear regulation approaches that are relevant to the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder and involve the prefrontal cortex, namely cognitive regulation and avoidance/active coping. Despite the large body of translational research, many questions remain unanswered and posttraumatic stress disorder remains difficult to treat. We conclude by outlining future research directions related to the role of the prefrontal cortex in fear processing and implications for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Rating expectations can slow aversive reversal learning.

The process of learning allows organisms to develop predictions about outcomes in the environment, and learning is sensitive to both simple associations and higher order knowledge. However, it is unknown whether consciously attending to expectations shapes the learning process itself. Here, we directly tested whether rating expectations shapes arousal during classical conditioning. Participants performed an aversive learning paradigm wherein one image (CS+) was paired with shock on 50% of trials, while a second image (CS-) was never paired with shock. Halfway through the task, contingencies reversed. One group of participants rated the probability of upcoming shock on each trial, while the other group made no online ratings. We measured skin conductance response (SCR) evoked in response to the CS and used traditional analyses as well as quantitative models of reinforcement learning to test whether rating expectations influenced arousal and aversive reversal learning. Participants who provided online expectancy ratings displayed slower learning based on a hybrid model of adaptive learning and reduced reversal of SCR relative to those who did not rate expectations. Mediation analysis revealed that the effect of associative learning on SCR could be fully explained through its effects on subjective expectancy within the group who provided ratings. This suggests that the act of rating expectations reduces the speed of learning, likely through changes in attention, and that expectations directly influence arousal. Our findings indicate that higher order expectancy judgments can alter associative learning.

Human threat learning is associated with gut microbiota composition.

The ability to learn about threat and safety is critical for survival. Studies in rodent models have shown that the gut microbiota can modulate such behaviors. In humans, evidence showing an association with threat or extinction learning is lacking. Here, we tested whether individual variability in threat and extinction learning was related to gut microbiota composition in healthy adults. We found that threat, but not extinction learning, varies with individuals' microbiome composition. Our results provide evidence that the gut microbiota is associated with excitatory threat learning across species.

Elemental and configural threat learning bias extinction generalization.

Emotional experiences often contain a multitude of details that may be represented in memory as individual elements or integrated into a single representation. How details associated with a negative emotional event are represented in memory can have important implications for extinction strategies designed to reduce emotional responses. For example, is extinguishing one cue associated with an aversive outcome sufficient to reduce learned behavior to other cues present at the time of learning that were not directly extinguished? Here, we used a between-subjects multi-day threat conditioning and extinction task to assess whether participants generalize extinction from one cue to unextinguished cues. On Day 1, one group of participants learned that a compound conditioned stimulus, composed of a tone and colored square, predicted an uncomfortable shock to the wrist (Compound group). A second group learned that the tone and square separately predicted shock (Separate group). On Day 2, participants in both groups were exposed to the tone in the absence of shocks (cue extinction). On Day 3, we tested whether extinction generalized from the extinguished to the unextinguished cue, as well as to a compound composed of both cues. Results showed that configural and elemental learning had unique and opposite effects on extinction generalization. Subjects who initially learned that a compound cue predicted shock successfully generalized extinction learning from the tone to the square, but exhibited threat relapse to the compound cue. In contrast, subjects who initially learned that each cue individually predicted shock did not generalize extinction learning from the tone to the square, but threat responses to the compound were low. These results highlight the importance of whether details of an aversive event are represented as integrated or separated memories, as these representations affect the success or limits of extinction generalization.

Hippocampus Guides Adaptive Learning during Dynamic Social Interactions.

How do we evaluate whether someone will make a good friend or collaborative peer? A hallmark of human cognition is the ability to make adaptive decisions based on information garnered from limited prior experiences. Using an interactive social task measuring adaptive choice (deciding who to reengage or avoid) in male and female participants, we find the hippocampus supports value-based social choices following single-shot learning. These adaptive choices elicited a suppression signal in the hippocampus, revealing sensitivity for the subjective perception of a person and how well they treat you during choice. The extent to which the hippocampus was suppressed was associated with flexibly interacting with prior generous individuals and avoiding selfish individuals. Further, we found that hippocampal signals during decision-making were related to subsequent memory for a person and the offer they made before. Consistent with the hippocampus leveraging previously executed choices to solidify a reliable neural signature for future adaptive behavior, we also observed a later hippocampal enhancement. These findings highlight the hippocampus playing a multifaceted role in socially adaptive learning.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Adaptively navigating social interactions requires an integration of prior experiences with information gleaned from the current environment. While most research has focused on striatal-based feedback learning, open questions remain regarding the role of hippocampal-based episodic memory systems. Here, we show that during social decisions based on prior experience, hippocampal suppression signals were sensitive to adaptive choice, while hippocampal enhancements was related to subsequent memory for the original social interaction. These findings highlight the hippocampus playing a multifaceted role in socially adaptive learning.