Exeter MR Research Centre

Cognitive fMRI Group

Collaborators

Tim
Prof Timothy Hodgson
(Lincoln University)
Ben
Dr. Ben Parris
(Bournemouth University)

The effect of attachment priming on amygdala reactivity and attentional bias to threat cues

It is generally agreed that a sense of attachment security (the implicit beliefs that the world is generally safe and explorable, that loved ones are available, supportive, and trustworthy, and that oneself is worthy of care) can modulate threat responding, although the exact stage at which this occurs is unclear. Whilst all theories, at least implicitly, predict that this will include the modulation of threat related amygdala reactivity, the roles of prefrontal mediated threat appraisal and control processes are disputed (Coan, 2008; Mikulincer& Shaver, 2007).

Therefore, a key aim of this study is to use fMRI to delineate how attachment security (both state and trait) modulates the activity of brain mechanisms which underlie threat appraisal and regulation.

Imaging the impossible: An fMRI study of impossible causal relationships in magic tricks.

Understanding causal relationships and violations of those relationships is fundamental to learning about the world around us. Over time some of these relationships become so firmly established that they form part of an implicit belief system about what is possible and impossible in the world. Previous studies investigating the neural correlates of violations of learned relationships have focused on relationships that were taskspecific and probabilistic. In contrast, the present study uses magic-trick perception as a means of investigating violations of relationships that are long-established, deterministic, and that form part of the aforementioned belief system.

References

Parris B.A, Kuhn G, Mizon G, Benattayallah A, Hodgson T.L. Imaging the impossible: An fMRI study of impossible causal relationships in magic tricks. In NeuroImage, 45 (3): 1033-1039, April 2009.

Press

Magic reveals the brain's responses to the impossible. Article by Ewen Calloway, New Scientist, January 2009.
'Magic and the Brain: How Magicians "Trick" the Mind' Article by Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik, Scientific American, December 2008.

The role of the lateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate in stimulus-response association reversals.

Many complex tasks require us to f lexibly switch between behavioral rules, associations, and strategies. The prefrontal cerebral cortex is thought to be critical to the performance of such behaviors, although the relative contribution of different components of this structure and associated subcortical regions are not fully understood. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity during a simple task which required repeated reversals of a rule linking a colored cue and a left/right motor response.

References

Parris B.A, Thai N.J, Benattayallah A, Summers I.R, Hodgson T.L. The role of the lateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate in stimulus-response association reversals. In Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19 13-24, 2007.