A1 Vertaisarvioitu alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä lehdessä
Rapid withdrawal from a threatening animal is movement-specific and mediated by reflex-like neural processing
Tekijät: Railo Henry, Kraufvelin Nelli, Santalahti Jussi, Laine Teemu
Kustantaja: Elsevier BV
Julkaisuvuosi: 2023
Journal: NeuroImage
Tietokannassa oleva lehden nimi: NeuroImage
Lehden akronyymi: Neuroimage
Artikkelin numero: 120441
Vuosikerta: 283
ISSN: 1053-8119
eISSN: 1095-9572
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120441
Verkko-osoite: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120441
Rinnakkaistallenteen osoite: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/181788903
Responses to potentially dangerous stimuli are among the most basic animal behaviors. While research has shown that threats automatically capture the attention of human participants, research has failed to demonstrate automatic behavioral responses to threats in humans. Using a novel naturalistic paradigm, we show that two species of animals humans often report fearing trigger rapid withdrawal responses: participants withdrew their arm from photos of snakes and spiders faster, and with higher acceleration when compared to bird and butterfly stimuli. The behavior was specific to withdrawal as approach movements or button-press/release tasks failed to detect a similar difference. Moreover, between-participant differences in how aversive they found the stimuli predicted the participant's withdrawal speed, indicating that the paradigm was also sensitive to trait-level differences between individuals. Using electroencephalography (EEG), we show that the fast withdrawal was mediated by two attentional processes. First, fast withdrawal responses were associated with early amplification of sensory signals (40-110 ms after stimulus). Second, a later correlate of feature-based attention (early posterior negativity, EPN, 200-240 ms after stimulus) revealed the opposite pattern: Stronger EPN was associated with slower behavioral responses, suggesting that the deployment of attention towards the threatening stimulus features, or failure to "disengage" attention from the stimulus, was detrimental for withdrawal speed. Altogether, the results suggest that rapid behavioral withdrawal from a threatening animal is mediated by reflex-like attentional processing, and later, conscious attention to stimulus features may hinder escaping the treat.
Ladattava julkaisu This is an electronic reprint of the original article. |  |
