TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mériau, Katja
A1  - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1  - Kazzer, Philipp
A1  - Prehn, Kristin
A1  - Villringer, Arno
A1  - van der Meer, Elke
A1  - Heekeren, Hauke R.
T1  - Insular activity during passive viewing of aversive stimuli reflects individual differences in state negative affect
N2  - People differ with regard to how they perceive, experience, and express negative affect. While trait negative affect reflects a stable, sustained personality trait, state negative affect represents a stimulus limited and temporally acute emotion. So far, little is known about the neural systems mediating the relationship between negative affect and acute emotion processing. To address this issue we investigated in a healthy female sample how individual differences in state negative affect are reflected in changes in blood oxygen level-dependent responses during passive viewing of emotional stimuli. To assess autonomic arousal we simultaneously recorded changes in skin conductance level. At the psychophysiological level we found increased skin conductance level in response to aversive relative to neutral pictures. However, there was no association of state negative affect with skin conductance level. At the neural level we found that high state negative affect was associated with increased left insular activity during passive viewing of aversive stimuli. The insula has been implicated in interoceptive processes and in the integration of sensory, visceral, and affective information thus contributing to subjective emotional experience. Greater recruitment of the insula in response to aversive relative to neutral stimuli in subjects with high state negative affect may represent increased processing of salient aversive stimuli.
Y1  - 2009
UR  - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02782626
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2008.05.006
SN  - 0278-2626
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1  - Heekeren, Hauke R.
A1  - Preusse, Franziska
A1  - Kramer, Jürg
A1  - van der Meer, Elke
T1  - Cerebral correlates of analogical processing and their modulation by training
N2  - There is increasing interest ill understanding the neural systems that mediate analogical thinking, which is essential for learning and fluid intelligence. The aim of the present study was to shed light on the cerebral correlates of geometric analogical processing and on training-induced changes at the behavioral and brain level. In healthy participants a bilateral fronto-parietal network was engaged in processing geometric analogies and showed greater blood oxygenation dependent (BOLD) signals as resource demands increased. This network, as well as fusiform and subcortical brain regions, additionally showed training-induced decreases in the BOLD signal over time. The general finding that brain regions were modulated by the amount of resources demanded by the task, and/or by the reduction of allocated resources due to short term training, reflects increased efficiency - in terms of more focal and more specialized brain activation - to more economically process the geometric analogies. Our data indicate a rapid adaptation of the cognitive system which is efficiently modulated by short term training based on a positive correlation of resource demands and brain activation.
Y1  - 2009
UR  - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10538119
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.06.025
SN  - 1053-8119
ER  -