Neural representation of anxiety and personality during exposure to anxiety-provoking and neutral scenes from scary movies.

ABSTRACT: Some people search for intense sensations such as being scared by frightening movies while others do not. The brain mechanisms underlying such inter-individual differences are not clear. Testing theoretical models, we investigated neural correlates of anxiety and the personality trait sensation seeking in 40 subjects who watched threatening and neutral scenes from scary movies during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Threat versus neutral scenes induced increased activation in anterior cingulate cortex, insula, thalamus, and visual areas. Movie-induced anxiety correlated positively with activation in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, indicating a role for this area in the subjective experience of being scared. Sensation seeking-scores correlated positively with brain activation to threat

SUBMITTER: Straube T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6870723 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature