Abstract
Anger is considered a unique high-arousal and approach-related negative emotion. The influence of individual differences in trait anger on the processing of visual stimuli is relevant to questions about emotional processing and remains to be explored. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we explored the neural responses to standardized images, selected based on valence and arousal ratings in a group of men with high trait anger compared to those with normative to low anger scores (controls). Results show increased activation in the left-lateralized ventral fronto-parietal attention network to unpleasant images by individuals with high trait anger. There was also a group by arousal interaction in the left thalamus/pulvinar such that individuals with high trait anger had increased pulvinar activation to the high-arousal (versus low arousal) unpleasant images as compared to controls. Thus, individual differences in trait anger in men are associated with brain regions subserving executive attentional and sensory integration during the processing of unpleasant emotional stimuli, particularly to high arousal images.
Highlights
Anger is considered to be an approach-related emotional state incorporating physiological, affective, cognitive, and behavioral components which occur in response to unpleasant or undesired events [1,2,3,4]
Our intent was to determine if individuals with elevated trait anger as compared to controls would demonstrate increased blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity in left-lateralized brain attention networks that are involved in processing of normatively considered ‘high arousal’ emotional visual stimuli
There was a main effect of group for unpleasant images across arousal conditions such that HTAs showed higher left lateralized activations in the middle occipital gyrus (MGO), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), middle frontal gyrus (MFG), mid-insula, and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) compared with controls (Fig 1A)
Summary
Anger is considered to be an approach-related emotional state incorporating physiological, affective, cognitive, and behavioral components which occur in response to unpleasant or undesired events [1,2,3,4]. It is postulated that the approach motivation in anger, modulates the evaluative response to salient stimuli [1, 2, 29] This motivational theoretical model suggests that cortical regions are asymmetrically involved in approach and avoidance motivation, and that approach-related anger [30], associated with increased levels of left lateralized brain activity [31, 32] and decreased levels of right frontal activity [2] reflects a bias or selective attention to negatively valenced stimuli. Our intent was to determine if individuals with elevated trait anger as compared to controls would demonstrate increased blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity in left-lateralized brain attention networks that are involved in processing of normatively considered ‘high arousal’ emotional visual stimuli. Trait anger and fronto-parietal activation stimuli by individuals with high trait anger through biofeedback for example may be a candidate approach for therapeutic intervention
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