TY - JOUR A1 - Huestegge, Lynn A1 - Herbort, Oliver A1 - Gosch, Nora A1 - Kunde, Wilfried A1 - Pieczykolan, Aleks T1 - Free-choice saccades and their underlying determinants: explorations of high-level voluntary oculomotor control JF - Journal of Vision N2 - Models of eye-movement control distinguish between different control levels, ranging from automatic (bottom-up, stimulus-driven selection) and automatized (based on well-learned routines) to voluntary (top-down, goal-driven selection, e.g., based on instructions). However, one type of voluntary control has yet only been examined in the manual and not in the oculomotor domain, namely free-choice selection among arbitrary targets, that is, targets that are of equal interest from both a bottom-up and top-down processing perspective. Here, we ask which features of targets (identity- or location-related) are used to determine such oculomotor free-choice behavior. In two experiments, participants executed a saccade to one of four peripheral targets in three different choice conditions: unconstrained free choice, constrained free choice based on target identity (color), and constrained free choice based on target location. The analysis of choice frequencies revealed that unconstrained free-choice selection closely resembled constrained choice based on target location. The results suggest that free-choice oculomotor control is mainly guided by spatial (location-based) target characteristics. We explain these results by assuming that participants tend to avoid less parsimonious recoding of target-identity representations into spatial codes, the latter being a necessary prerequisite to configure oculomotor commands. KW - Adolescent KW - Stimulation KW - Adult KW - Eye Movements/physiology KW - Female KW - Humans KW - Learning/physiology KW - Male KW - Oculomotor Muscles/physiology KW - Photic KW - Choice Behavior/physiology KW - Psychomotor Performance/physiology KW - Saccades/physiology KW - Young Adult KW - eye movement KW - saccades KW - free choice KW - top-down processing KW - bottom-up processing KW - control levels Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-201493 VL - 19 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Reicherts, Philipp A1 - Juravle, Georgiana A1 - von Leupoldt, Andreas T1 - Attention mechanisms during predictable and unpredictable threat - a steady-state visual evoked potential approach JF - NeuroImage N2 - Fear is elicited by imminent threat and leads to phasic fear responses with selective attention, whereas anxiety is characterized by a sustained state of heightened vigilance due to uncertain danger. In the present study, we investigated attention mechanisms in fear and anxiety by adapting the NPU-threat test to measure steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs). We investigated ssVEPs across no aversive events (N), predictable aversive events (P), and unpredictable aversive events (U), signaled by four-object arrays (30 s). In addition, central cues were presented during all conditions but predictably signaled imminent threat only during the P condition. Importantly, cues and context events were flickered at different frequencies (15 Hz vs. 20 Hz) in order to disentangle respective electrocortical responses. The onset of the context elicited larger electrocortical responses for U compared to P context. Conversely, P cues elicited larger electrocortical responses compared to N cues. Interestingly, during the presence of the P cue, visuocortical processing of the concurrent context was also enhanced. The results support the notion of enhanced initial hypervigilance to unpredictable compared to predictable threat contexts, while predictable cues show electrocortical enhancement of the cues themselves but additionally a boost of context processing. KW - Event-related potential KW - Contextual fear KW - Conditioning evidence KW - Sustained attention KW - Selective attention KW - Aversive events KW - Time-course KW - Virtual-reality KW - Anxiety KW - Humans Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-187365 VL - 139 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ziegler, C. A1 - Richter, J. A1 - Mahr, M. A1 - Gajewska, A. A1 - Schiele, M.A. A1 - Gehrmann, A. A1 - Schmidt, B. A1 - Lesch, K.-P. A1 - Lang, T. A1 - Helbig-Lang, S. A1 - Pauli, P. A1 - Kircher, T. A1 - Reif, A. A1 - Rief, W. A1 - Vossbeck-Elsebusch, A.N. A1 - Arolt, V. A1 - Wittchen, H.-U. A1 - Hamm, A.O. A1 - Deckert, J. A1 - Domschke, K. T1 - MAOA gene hypomethylation in panic disorder-reversibility of an epigenetic risk pattern by psychotherapy JF - Translational Psychiatry N2 - Epigenetic signatures such as methylation of the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene have been found to be altered in panic disorder (PD). Hypothesizing temporal plasticity of epigenetic processes as a mechanism of successful fear extinction, the present psychotherapy-epigenetic study for we believe the first time investigated MAOA methylation changes during the course of exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in PD. MAOA methylation was compared between N=28 female Caucasian PD patients (discovery sample) and N=28 age- and sex-matched healthy controls via direct sequencing of sodium bisulfite-treated DNA extracted from blood cells. MAOA methylation was furthermore analyzed at baseline (T0) and after a 6-week CBT (T1) in the discovery sample parallelized by a waiting time in healthy controls, as well as in an independent sample of female PD patients (N=20). Patients exhibited lower MAOA methylation than healthy controls (P<0.001), and baseline PD severity correlated negatively with MAOA methylation (P=0.01). In the discovery sample, MAOA methylation increased up to the level of healthy controls along with CBT response (number of panic attacks; T0-T1: +3.37±2.17%), while non-responders further decreased in methylation (-2.00±1.28%; P=0.001). In the replication sample, increases in MAOA methylation correlated with agoraphobic symptom reduction after CBT (P=0.02-0.03). The present results support previous evidence for MAOA hypomethylation as a PD risk marker and suggest reversibility of MAOA hypomethylation as a potential epigenetic correlate of response to CBT. The emerging notion of epigenetic signatures as a mechanism of action of psychotherapeutic interventions may promote epigenetic patterns as biomarkers of lasting extinction effects. KW - Adult KW - Case-Control Studies KW - Cognitive Therapy KW - DNA Methylation KW - Epigenesis KW - Genetic KW - Female KW - Humans KW - Monoamine Oxidase/genetics KW - Panic Disorder/genetics KW - Panic Disorder/therapy KW - Sequence Analysis KW - DNA Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-164422 IS - 6 ER -