Neural Activity Relating to Generation and Representation of Galvanic Skin Conductance Responses: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

By Hugo D. Critchley, Rebecca Elliott, Christophe Mathias, R. J. Dolan. Journal of Neuroscience, 2000

806 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Central feedback of peripheral states of arousal influences motivational behavior and decision making. The sympathetic skin conductance response (SCR) is one index of autonomic arousal. The precise functional neuroanatomy underlying generation and representation of SCR during motivational behavior is undetermined, although it is impaired by discrete brain lesions to ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and parietal lobe. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activity associated with spontaneous fluctuations in amplitude of SCR, and activity corresponding to generation and afferent representation of discrete SCR events. Regions that covaried with increased SCR included right orbitofrontal cortex, right anterior insula, left lingual gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, and left cerebellum. At a less stringent level of significance, predicted areas in bilateral medial prefrontal cortex and right inferior parietal lobule covaried with SCR. Generation of discrete SCR events was associated with significant activity in left medial prefrontal cortex, bilateral extrastriate visual cortices, and cerebellum. Activity in right medial prefrontal cortex related to afferent representation of SCR events. Activity in bilateral medial prefrontal lobe, right orbitofrontal cortex, and bilateral extrastriate visual cortices was common to both generation and afferent representation of discrete SCR events identified in a conjunction analysis. Our results suggest that areas implicated in emotion and attention are differentially involved in generation and representation of peripheral SCR responses. We propose that this functional arrangement enables integration of adaptive bodily responses with ongoing emotional and attentional states of the organism.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/84d0fd67412e10b1092b7083c3e1bc7c2fe296ef

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Citations in the corpus

Neurophysiology of performance monitoring and adaptive behavior. (2014, background): “It has been shown that 1) pMFC activity correlates with SCRs (114, 191, 371), 2) direct electrical stimulation of the pMFC leads to changes in SCR (337), and 3) lesions in this brain area lead to attenuated SCRs (515).”
A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments (2006, background): “SCL reflects the overall level of sympathetic arousal whereas SCR reflect transient sympathetic arousal, either spontaneous or in response to events [23,24].”
Mind-wandering and dysphoria (2007, background): “…prefrontal cortex, the cerebellum and the visual cortices are correlated with the skin conductance response in a variety of different tasks including a checkerboard task (Williams et al., 2000b) a gambling task (Critchley et al., 2000) and during the resting state (Patterson et al., 2002).”
Neural correlates of social and nonsocial emotions: An fMRI study (2006, neutral): “, 1998), which are also associated with visceral functions, or socalled ‘‘gut reactions’’ (Critchley et al., 2000).”
Affective and deliberative processes in risky choice: age differences in risk taking in the Columbia Card Task. (2009, background): “Magnitude of EDAderived skin conductance response (SCR) is a widely used physiological measure of emotional arousal (Boucsein, 1992; Critchley, Elliott, Mathias, & Dolan, 2000 ).”
Neural mechanisms of autonomic, affective, and cognitive integration (2005, methodology): “Task selection was motivated by the prediction that activity cognitive/ speech regions can be dissociated neuroanatomically from motor regions and the remaining shared activity would be observed in regions representing effort and autonomic control (Critchley et al., 2000b).”
Neurocircuitry of Mood Disorders (2010, background): “…functions such as heart rate and respiration (Kaada, 1960), and recent fMRI studies have shown that activity in the medial prefrontal cortex correlates with visceral activation in response to emotional (Critchley et al, 2000; Williams et al, 2000) or even non-emotional (Teves et al, 2004) stimuli.”
Common and distinct neural responses during direct and incidental processing of multiple facial emotions (2003, background): “Indeed, at such low thresholds, where false positives are poorly protected against, the voxels which showed interactions by emotion type appeared more responsive to disgust or combinations of disgust and sadness than to fear.”
Brain Activity during Simulated Deception: An Event-Related Functional Magnetic Resonance Study (2002, background): “…frequently associated with positive skin conductance response, anxiety, or emotion (orbitofrontal cortex, lingual and fusiform gyrus , cerebellum, insula, and amygdala) and our participants had no subjective anxiety during the GKT (Gur et al., 1987; Chua et al., 1999; Critchley et al., 2000).”
A common role of insula in feelings, empathy and uncertainty. (2009, neutral): “(a) Illustrates brain activity that is significantly correlated with changes in peripheral electrodermal activity observed in subjects performing a gambling task [ 50 ].”
Activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex covaries with sympathetic skin conductance level: a physiological account of a "default mode" of brain function (2004, background): “Recent functional imaging data report neural activity associated with changes in sympathetic arousal, indexed by skin conductance responses (SCRs) and induced using psychological stimulation (Critchley et al., 2000; Fredrikson et al., 1998; Patterson et al., 2002; Williams et al., 2001).”
Activity in the human brain predicting differential heart rate responses to emotional facial expressions (2005, background): “…fusiform cortex may be modulated by covert or overt attention, emotionality (where the amygdala connectivity may facilitate to fusiform activity enhancement), and even covaries with fluctuations in sympathetic arousal (Critchley et al., 2000a,b; Morris et al., 1997, 1998; Vuilleumier et al., 2001).”
The neural bases of cooperation and competition: an fMRI investigation (2004, background): “Moreover, activation of the anterior insula may also be consistent with its involvement in autonomic arousal (e.g., see Critchley et al., 2000; Oppenheimer et al., 1992).”
Dissociable Intrinsic Connectivity Networks for Salience Processing and Executive Control (2007, background): “…in processing errors and conflict (Menon et al., 2001; Kerns et al., 2004; Ridderinkhof et al., 2004a), and another suggesting that the dACC and FI are specialized modules for sympathetic efference and interoceptive feedback (Critchley et al., 2000, 2004; Craig, 2002; Saper, 2002; Critchley, 2005).”