Valentini, Elia and Koch, Katharina and Aglioti, Salvatore Maria (2014) Thoughts of Death Modulate Psychophysical and Cortical Responses to Threatening Stimuli. PLoS ONE, 9 (11). e112324-e112324. DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0112324
Valentini, Elia and Koch, Katharina and Aglioti, Salvatore Maria (2014) Thoughts of Death Modulate Psychophysical and Cortical Responses to Threatening Stimuli. PLoS ONE, 9 (11). e112324-e112324. DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0112324
Valentini, Elia and Koch, Katharina and Aglioti, Salvatore Maria (2014) Thoughts of Death Modulate Psychophysical and Cortical Responses to Threatening Stimuli. PLoS ONE, 9 (11). e112324-e112324. DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0112324
Abstract
Existential social psychology studies show that awareness of one's eventual death profoundly influences human cognition and behaviour by inducing defensive reactions against end-of-life related anxiety. Much less is known about the impact of reminders of mortality on brain activity. Therefore we explored whether reminders of mortality influence subjective ratings of intensity and threat of auditory and painful thermal stimuli and the associated electroencephalographic activity. Moreover, we explored whether personality and demographics modulate psychophysical and neural changes related to mortality salience (MS). Following MS induction, a specific increase in ratings of intensity and threat was found for both nociceptive and auditory stimuli. While MS did not have any specific effect on nociceptive and auditory evoked potentials, larger amplitude of theta oscillatory activity related to thermal nociceptive activity was found after thoughts of death were induced. MS thus exerted a top-down modulation on theta electroencephalographic oscillatory amplitude, specifically for brain activity triggered by painful thermal stimuli. This effect was higher in participants reporting higher threat perception, suggesting that inducing a death-related mind-set may have an influence on body-defence related somatosensory representations.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | Cerebral Cortex; Humans; Pain; Death; Electroencephalography; Acoustic Stimulation; Anxiety; Awareness; Thinking; Psychophysics; Evoked Potentials, Auditory; Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory; Adult; Female; Male |
Subjects: | R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry |
Divisions: | Faculty of Science and Health Faculty of Science and Health > Psychology, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 25 May 2016 10:51 |
Last Modified: | 30 Oct 2024 16:24 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/16789 |
Available files
Filename: journal.pone.0112324.PDF
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0