A 5-min paradigm to evoke robust emotional reactivity in neuroimaging studies

Dean Sabatinelli; Constantin Winker; Andrew H Farkas; Maimu A Rehbein; Markus Junghoefer

doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1102213

A 5-min paradigm to evoke robust emotional reactivity in neuroimaging studies

Front Neurosci. 2023 Mar 7:17:1102213. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1102213. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Dean Sabatinelli¹, Constantin Winker^{2

3}, Andrew H Farkas¹, Maimu A Rehbein^{2

3}, Markus Junghoefer^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, BioImaging Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States.
² Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignal Analysis, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
³ Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.

Abstract

The advent of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach to funding translational neuroscience has highlighted a need for research that includes measures across multiple task types. However, the duration of any given experiment is quite limited, particularly in neuroimaging contexts, and therefore robust estimates of multiple behavioral domains are often difficult to achieve. Here we offer a "turn-key" emotion-evoking paradigm suitable for neuroimaging experiments that demonstrates strong effect sizes across widespread cortical and subcortical structures. This short series could be easily added to existing fMRI protocols, and yield a reliable estimate of emotional reactivity to complement research in other behavioral domains. This experimental adjunct could be used to enable an initial comparison of emotional modulation with the primary behavioral focus of an investigator's work, and potentially identify new relationships between domains of behavior that have not previously been recognized.

Keywords: RDoC; amygdala; emotion; functional MRI; protocol; stimuli; visual perception.

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research of the University of Münster (Ju2/024/15) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, SFB-TRR58-C01).