Human Responses to Visually Evoked Threat

Vision is the primary sense humans use to evaluate and respond to threats. Understanding the biological underpinnings of the human threat response has been hindered by lack of realistic in-lab threat paradigms. We established an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) platform to simultaneously measure behavior, physiological state and neural activity from the human brain using chronically implanted electrodes. Subjects with high anxiety showed increased visual scanning in response to threats as compared to healthy controls. In both healthy and anxious subjects, the amount of scanning behavior correlated with the magnitude of physiological arousal, suggesting that visual scanning behavior is directly linked to internal state. Intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) recordings from three subjects suggested that high frequency gamma activity in the insula positively correlates with physiological arousal induced by visual threats and that low frequency theta activity in the orbitofrontal cortex ...

视觉是人类评估和应对威胁的主要感官。由于缺乏实验室中真实的威胁范式，人类威胁反应的生物基础研究一直受到阻碍。我们搭建了一个沉浸式虚拟现实（VR）平台，通过长期植入的电极同步测量人类的行为、生理状态及大脑神经活动。与健康对照组相比，高焦虑受试者在应对威胁时表现出更频繁的视觉扫描行为。在健康受试者和焦虑受试者中，视觉扫描行为的频率均与生理唤醒程度呈正相关，这表明视觉扫描行为与个体的内部状态存在直接关联。对三名受试者的颅内脑电图（iEEG）记录分析显示，岛叶的高频伽马活动与视觉威胁引发的生理唤醒呈正相关，而眶额皮层的低频 theta 活动...