Subcortical Facilitation of Behavioral Responses to Threat.

ABSTRACT: Behavioral responses to threat are critical to survival. Several cortical and subcortical brain regions respond selectively to threat. However, the relation of these neural responses and their underlying representations to behavior is unclear. We examined the contribution of lower-order subcortical representations to behavioral responses to threat in adult humans. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants viewed pairs of images presented to the same eye or to different eyes. We observed a monocular advantage, which indicates subcortical facilitation, for ancestral threats (snakes, spiders), but not for modern threats, positive images, or neutral images. In Experiment 3, we presented pairs of snakes or neutral images into the temporal or nasal hemifield. For snakes only, we observed a temporal h

SUBMITTER: Vida MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5638842 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature