Neural Mechanisms and Clinical Implications by Amy A. Winecoff Department of Psychology ...

195 Pages·2014·2.38 MB·English

Domain-General Affect: Neural Mechanisms and Clinical Implications
by
Amy A. Winecoff
Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
Duke University

Date:_______________________
Approved:

___________________________
Scott A. Huettel, Supervisor

___________________________
Nancy Zucker

___________________________
R. Alison Adcock

___________________________
Lasana Harris

___________________________
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy in the Department of
Psychology & Neuroscience in the Graduate School of Duke University

2014
ABSTRACT
Domain-General Affect: Neural Mechanisms and Clinical Implications
by
Amy A. Winecoff
Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
Duke University

Date:_______________________
Approved:

___________________________
Scott A. Huettel, Supervisor

___________________________
Nancy Zucker

___________________________
R. Alison Adcock

___________________________
Lasana Harris

___________________________
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of
Psychology & Neuroscience in the Graduate School of Duke University

2014
Copyright by
Amy A. Winecoff
2014
Abstract
Emotions guide the way individuals interact with the world, influencing nearly
every psychological process from attention, to learning, to metacognition.
Constructionist models of emotion posit that emotions arise out of combinations of more
general psychological ingredients. These psychological ingredients, however, also form
the building blocks of other affective responses such as subjective reactions to rewarding
and social stimuli. Here, I propose a domain-general account of affective functioning; I
contend that subjective responses to emotional, rewarding, and social stimuli all depend
on common psychological and neural mechanisms. I support this hypothesis with three
independent studies using both a basic science approach and a clinical approach. In the
first study (Chapter 2) I demonstrate that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC),
which has been implicated in encoding the value of primary, monetary, and social
rewards, also encodes the hedonic value of emotional stimuli. In addition to showing
that the mechanisms responsible for processing affective information are shared across
reward and emotional processing, I also discuss the relevance of a domain-general
constructionist account of affect for clinical disorders. In particular, I hypothesize that in
anorexia nervosa (AN), affective disturbances should be manifest across responses to
emotional, rewarding, and social stimuli (Chapter 3). In Chapter 4, I provide empirical
evidence for this conclusion by demonstrating that when viewing social stimuli, women

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with a history of AN show disturbances in the insula, a brain region that is responsible
for interoceptive and affective processing. This suggests that the interpersonal
difficulties frequently observed in patients with AN may be due to biases in domain-
general affective responses. In Chapter 5, I support this conclusion by showing that
individual differences in harm avoidance in healthy women, women with a current
diagnosis of AN, and women who have recovered from AN explain the relationship
between disordered eating and social dysfunction. Collectively, these results indicate
that subjective affective responses to rewarding, emotional, and social information all
rely on common mechanisms as would be suggested by a domain-general theory of
affect. Furthermore, the application of a constructionist domain-general account of affect
can help to explain the fundamental nature of affective disturbances in psychiatric
disorders such as AN.

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Dedication
To women and girls, their bodies, and their struggles.

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Contents

Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv

List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. xi

List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. xii

Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................xiv

1. Mechanisms of Domain-General Affective Processing ....................................................... 1

1.1Contemporary Theories of Human Emotion ................................................................ 3

1.2Survival Circuit Animal Models of Emotion .............................................................. 11
1.3 Extending Beyond Emotion: Application of the Constructionist Model to Reward

and Social Processing ........................................................................................................... 15

1.4 Neural Mechanisms of Domain-General Affective Processing ............................... 17

1.4.1 Neural Mechanisms of Domain-General Core Affect .......................................... 18

1.4.2 Neural Mechanisms of Domain-General Conceptualization .............................. 28

1.5 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 34

2. Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Encodes Emotional Value ............................................. 36

2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 36

2.2 Materials and Methods .................................................................................................. 38

2.2.1 Participants ................................................................................................................. 39

2.2.2 Emotion Regulation Paradigm ................................................................................ 40

2.2.3 fMRI Acquisition & Preprocessing ......................................................................... 42

2.2.4 fMRI and Behavioral Analysis ................................................................................. 43

2.3 Results .............................................................................................................................. 46

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2.3.1 Effects of Emotion Experience and Regulation ..................................................... 46

2.3.2 Neural Response to Normative Valence by Condition ........................................ 54

2.3.3 pvmPFC Activation and Differences in Behavioral Ratings ............................... 55

2.4 Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 56

2.4.1 vmPFC: Common Economic and Emotional Value ............................................. 58

2.4.2 vmPFC: Cognitive Control or Domain-General Subjective Value? ................... 58

3. Domain-General Affective Disturbances in Anorexia Nervosa ....................................... 62

3.1 Core Affective Disruptions in AN................................................................................ 64

3.1.1 Disruptions in Hedonic Value Processing ............................................................. 64

3.1.2 Disruptions in Punishment Processing .................................................................. 69

3.1.3 Disruptions in Bodily and Interoceptive Signal Processing ................................ 73

3.2 Conceptualization Disruptions in AN ......................................................................... 80

3.3 Summary of Affective Disruptions in AN .................................................................. 83
4. Social Processing in Anorexia Nervosa is Associated with Disruptions in the Neural

Mechanisms of Core Affect........................................................................................................ 84

4.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 84

4.2 Materials and Methods .................................................................................................. 88

4.2.1 Participants ................................................................................................................. 88

4.2.2 Testing Procedure ...................................................................................................... 89

4.2.2.1 Survey Measures ................................................................................................ 90

4.2.2.2 fMRI Stimuli ....................................................................................................... 90

4.2.2.3 fMRI Paradigm ................................................................................................... 91

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4.2.3 fMRI Acquisition & Preprocessing ......................................................................... 92

4.2.4 fMRI & Behavioral Analysis .................................................................................... 93

4.3 Results .............................................................................................................................. 95

4.3.1 Behavioral Results ..................................................................................................... 95

4.3.2 fMRI Results ............................................................................................................... 96

4.4 Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 100

5. Disruptions in Core Affect Explain Social Dysfunction in Anorexia Nervosa ............ 105

5.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 105

5.2 Materials and Methods ................................................................................................ 107

5.2.1 Participants ............................................................................................................... 107

5.2.2 Testing Procedure .................................................................................................... 109

5.2.2.1 Survey Measures .............................................................................................. 109

5.2.3 Data Analysis ........................................................................................................... 111

5.3 Results ............................................................................................................................ 113
5.3.1 Group Differences in Disordered Eating, Temperament, and Social

Functioning ....................................................................................................................... 113

5.3.2 Effect of Clinical Status and Temperament on Social Functioning .................. 117
5.3.3 Mediating Role of Temperament on Disordered Eating and Social Functioning

............................................................................................................................................. 120

5.4 Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 122

6. Discussion .............................................................................................................................. 126
6.1 Summary of Findings and Their Relevance to a Domain-General Constructionist

Model of Affect ................................................................................................................... 128

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6.2 Applications for the Domain-General Constructionist Model of Affect to Other

Psychiatric Disorders ......................................................................................................... 137

6.3 Final Conclusions ......................................................................................................... 139

References .................................................................................................................................. 140

Biography ................................................................................................................................... 178

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