Abstract
The anticipation of control over aversive events in life is relevant for our mental health. Insights on the underlying neural mechanisms remain limited. We developed a new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task that uses auditory stimuli to explore the neural correlates of (1) the anticipation of control over aversion and (2) the processing of aversion. In a sample of 25 healthy adults, we observed increased neural activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (ventromedial prefrontal cortex and rostral anterior cingulate cortex), other brain areas relevant for reward anticipation (ventral striatum, brainstem [ventral tegmental area], midcingulate cortex), and the posterior cingulate cortex when they anticipated control over aversion compared with anticipating no control (1). The processing of aversive sounds compared to neutral sounds (2) was associated with increased neural activation in the bilateral posterior insula. Our findings provide evidence for the important role of medial prefrontal regions in control anticipation and highlight the relevance of conceiving the neural mechanisms involved within a reward‐based framework.
Highlights
The anticipation of aversive events serves an adaptive purpose in human life: it is a preparatory response that allows us to forecast dangers and avoid negative or harmful experiences (Andrzejewski, Greenberg, & Carlson, 2019; Butz, Sigaud, & Gérard, 2003)
For the main contrast (a) anticipation of control > anticipation of no control, we found increased neural activation in a large prefrontal cluster comprising the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and several reward relevant regions such as the left ventral striatum, brainstem—a region consistent with the ventral tegmental area (VTA), and midcingulate cortex (MCC)
We found that (1) anticipating control in contrast to no control over aversion was accompanied by a higher neural activation in a large medial prefrontal cluster comprising the vmPFC and rACC, several other regions of the reward system such as the left ventral striatum and the brainstem, and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)
Summary
The anticipation of aversive events serves an adaptive purpose in human life: it is a preparatory response that allows us to forecast dangers and avoid negative or harmful experiences (Andrzejewski, Greenberg, & Carlson, 2019; Butz, Sigaud, & Gérard, 2003). The perception of control is an important dimension of anticipating aversive events affecting our cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses (Bandura, 1983; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The concept of learned helplessness, that is, the anticipation of no control over the outcome of a situation, has been a major theme in depression research (Pryce et al, 2011). It stems from the pioneering work of Maier & Seligman, 2016 demonstrating that exposing animals to an inescapable aversive stimulation leads to a failure to escape in an
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