ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2026
Both mental imagery and object-based attention regulate differential fear conditioning in the anterior insula.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Distraction is a common emotion regulation strategy, disrupting emotion generation by prioritizing distracter stimulus processing at the expense of the emotion elicitor. Across two experiments (experiment 1: behavioral psychophysiology, N = 44; experiment 2: neuroimaging with psychophysiology, N = 28), we predicted that both object-based (external) and mental imagery-based (internal) distraction would down-regulate differential fear responding. Participants underwent differential fear conditioning, pairing one face image with shock (CS+) while another face image was never paired with shock (CS-). Participants then viewed face/place composite images and were cued to attend to the face (CS+ or CS-) or distract themselves. Distraction was achieved either by attending to a superimposed place image (external distraction) or imagining a place image (internal distraction). Skin conductance response, self-reported fear, and anterior insula (aIn) results confirmed the acquisition of differential fear. Self-reported fear and aIn results evidenced fear down-regulation in both object-based and imagery-based distraction. Activity in stimulus-specific regions of the ventral visual stream suggested that fear down-regulation occurred via prioritization of the visually displayed or imagined distracter, inhibiting CS+ processing. Though effective, internal distraction was rated as more difficult than external distraction. Together, these findings suggest that both object-based and mental imagery-based distraction successfully down-regulated differential fear responding.
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