The Role of the Pulvinar in Perceived Threat in Mental Simulations
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Role of the Pulvinar in Perceived Threat in Mental Simulations
IRAS ID
194299
Contact name
Oliver Turnbull
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Bangor University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 7 months, 1 days
Research summary
As a deep part of the brain, the amygdala has a recognised role in the emotion of fear and response to threat. The pulvinar, as part of the thalamus, is tightly connected to the amygdala, and also other cortical regions, such as the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate. Indeed, an impairment of recognising fear-inducing stimuli (e.g., identifying fearful facial expressions) has been found in individuals with damage to the pulvinar. Therefore, it is argued that this region may have a specific role in the emotional fear response typically found in relation to threatening stimuli.
One novel question arising from the research on how humans imagine personal events that might occur in the future (termed, Episodic Future Thinking) is whether the pulvinar would have a role in potentially threatening imagined future events. Specifically, in a recent fMRI study, Szpunar, Jing, Benoit & Schacter (2015) found that pulvinar nucleus demonstrated repetition-related reductions in neural responding to repeated simulations of possible negative experiences but not positive or neutral experiences. These results suggest that the pulvinar plays a role in mentally representing negative affect – for experienced and imagined scenarios. In healthy adults, it may be helpful to recognise fearful scenarios in imagined future events (e.g., when imagining climbing down a cliff-face). Such emotional reactions may cause one to change, disregard or maintain a plan. If pulvinar patients cannot recognise fearful future events, this may affect goal-related behaviour. This project has implications for the basic understanding of emotional mechanisms of the pulvinar and may offer unique clinical insights into these patients’ views of the future. Finally, due to the neuropsychological commonalities of remembering and imagining, we decided to also assess memory processes. Our methods therefore focus on eliciting emotionally negative, neutral and positive remembered and imagined events in patients with brain damage to the pulvinar.REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/EM/0218
Date of REC Opinion
13 Jun 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion