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Michael P.I. Becker

Possible papers associated with this exact author name in Arrow. This page groups case-insensitive exact name matches and is not a full identity disambiguation profile.

3 papers

1 author row

YNICL Journal 2019 Journal Article

Phasic amygdala and BNST activation during the anticipation of temporally unpredictable social observation in social anxiety disorder patients

Benedikt Figel
Leonie Brinkmann
Christine Buff
Carina Y. Heitmann
David Hofmann
Maximilian Bruchmann
Michael P.I. Becker
Martin J. Herrmann

Anticipation of potentially threatening social situations is a key process in social anxiety disorder (SAD). In other anxiety disorders, recent research of neural correlates of anticipation of temporally unpredictable threat suggests a temporally dissociable involvement of amygdala and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) with phasic amygdala responses and sustained BNST activation. However, the temporal profile of amygdala and BNST responses during temporal unpredictability of threat has not been investigated in patients suffering from SAD. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate neural activation in the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) and the BNST during anticipation of temporally unpredictable aversive (video camera observation) relative to neutral (no camera observation) events in SAD patients compared to healthy controls (HC). For the analysis of fMRI data, we applied two regressors (phasic/sustained) within the same model to detect temporally dissociable brain responses. The aversive condition induced increased anxiety in patients compared to HC. SAD patients compared to HC showed increased phasic activation in the CeA and the BNST for anticipation of aversive relative to neutral events. SAD patients as well as HC showed sustained activity alterations in the BNST for aversive relative to neutral anticipation. No differential activity during sustained threat anticipation in SAD patients compared to HC was found. Taken together, our study reveals both CeA and BNST involvement during threat anticipation in SAD patients. The present results point towards potentially SAD-specific threat processing marked by elevated phasic but not sustained CeA and BNST responses when compared to HC.

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YNIMG Journal 2016 Journal Article

Parametric modulation of reward sequences during a reversal task in ACC and VMPFC but not amygdala and striatum

Michael P.I. Becker
Alexander M. Nitsch
Johannes Hewig
Wolfgang H.R. Miltner
Thomas Straube

Several regions of the frontal cortex interact with striatal and amygdala regions to mediate the evaluation of reward-related information and subsequent adjustment of response choices. Recent theories discuss the particular relevance of dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) for switching behavior; consecutively, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is involved in mediating exploitative behaviors by tracking reward values unfolding after the behavioral switch. Amygdala, on the other hand, has been implied in coding the valence of stimulus-outcome associations and the ventral striatum (VS) has consistently been shown to code a reward prediction error (RPE). Here, we used fMRI data acquired in humans during a reversal task to parametrically model different sequences of positive feedback in order to unravel differential contributions of these brain regions to the tracking and exploitation of rewards. Parameters from an Optimal Bayesian Learner accurately predicted the divergent involvement of dACC and VMPFC during feedback processing: dACC signaled the first, but not later, presentations of positive feedback, while VMPFC coded trial-by-trial accumulations in reward value. Our results confirm that dACC carries a prominent confirmatory signal during processing of first positive feedback. Amygdala coded positive feedbacks more uniformly, while striatal regions were associated with RPE.

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YNIMG Journal 2014 Journal Article

Effects of social context on feedback-related activity in the human ventral striatum

Doerte Simon
Michael P.I. Becker
Martin Mothes-Lasch
Wolfgang H.R. Miltner
Thomas Straube

It is now well established that activation of the ventral striatum (VS) encodes feedback related information, in particular, aspects of feedback validity, reward magnitude, and reward probability. More recent findings also point toward a role of VS in encoding social context of feedback processing. Here, we investigated the effect of social observation on neural correlates of feedback processing. To this end, subjects performed a time estimation task and received positive, negative, or uninformative feedback. In one half of the experiment subjects thought that an experimenter closely monitored their face via a camera. We successfully replicated an elevated VS response to positive relative to negative feedback. Further, our data demonstrate that this reward-related activation of the VS is increased during observation by others. Using uninformative feedback as reference condition, we show that specifically VS activation during positive feedback was modulated by observation manipulation. Our findings support accounts which posit a role of VS in integrating social context into the processing of feedback and, in doing so, signaling its social relevance.

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