Neural Basis of Negativity Bias

Introduction

Human behaviour can be understood broadly as the organism’s response to various stimuli from the environment. However, it has to be acknowledged that the same situation in different people can arouse multiple behaviours, as it is moderated by a significant number of various factors, such as negativity bias. This phenomenon is comprehended to be a propensity of the organism under observation to attend and respond in a greater manner to negative stimuli . This asymmetry in the usage of positive versus negative information has been widely researched and consequently has been linked with psychophysiological and brain activation measures (to and Cacioppo, 2000, Ito et al., 1998, Kessler et al., 2005, Neta et al., 2009, Smith et al., 2006) which has indicated that it has some biological basis. For example, using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) as a means of informing the theory on the causes and consequences of the negativity bias revealed the significance of some specific brain regions. It is thus not surprising is that depression is characterized both by attention biases to negative information, which was also proved by the seminal work of beck (1976) highlighted how negativity biases are central to the development and maintenance of depression and anxiety.In the process of summing up the essay, the argument will be undertaken concerning the fact that negativity bias lies at the core of depression. Moreover, it is multidetermined and has a different biological basis that can be accounted for multiple contributions (my thesis) . And so it will first look at the study that revealed strong and essential neuro-anatomical correlations of the association between negativity bias and hopelessness. Secondly, it will look at the research that shows a negative relationship between the IFC volume and the measure of the negative bias, indicating that anxiety is feature mediated; thirdly both genetic variations and life stressors contribute to the impact of negativity bias. And lastly, the essay will examine a study of depressive patients undertaking the conditional study of the female patients with negative bias and showed significantly higher neuronal activation in the frontal lobe (Gollan et al., 2015).

First argument

Neural basis of negativity bias in the perception of ambiguous facial expression

The negative attitude has been described by many studies as the tendency to interpret the stimuli as negative and those studies indicate that such behaviour can prevent psychological well-being and , it can even lead to depressive behaviour. This essay believes in the biological basis of the negativity error, to which the evidence can be found thanks to the study of neural activation during perceptual decision making, for example, the examination of the processing of unclear faces in healthy participants, which was carried out by Ito, Yokokawa, Yahata, Isato, Suhara and Yamada. In the FMRI study of 50 participants, the negative attitude was positively correlated with the activity of bilateral pyrogenic anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) when ambiguous faces were perceived as sad and happy. In addition, the strength of functional communication between bilateral pgACC and right ridge ACC (dACC) / right thalamus was positively correlated with hopelessness, one of the basic features of depression. A strength of the study that needs to be acknowledged is that the researchers studied ambiguous faces so it could be more effective for investigating interpretation biases. Indeed, real situations are complicated where people often encounter ambiguous emotional expressions that can be perceived as negative or positive emotions. In conclusion, the negative attitude in this study found evidence of having its biological basis as it was associated with hyperactivity in bilateral pgACC. Further, their discoveries suggest that through stronger functional coupling between pg ACC and dACC, ambiguous emotion perception can be resolved by biased perception decisions towards significant "sad" information, people who have a depressive quality of hopelessness can undoubtedly even lead to social dysfunction.

Second argument

Yifan Hu, SandaDolcos;

As indicated, this essay claims that negative attitude has its biological basis. Futhermore, this essay claims that there is no single mechanism that conditions its existences,

That was found to have a behavioural side of human functioning can be combined with behaviours which are often characteristic of depression. And so, next to the region of the brain called pgaa, which was previously discussed, the next evidence for the biological basis of negativity bias is related to the structure of the brain and has its behavioural consequences in feeling anxiety, which further can cause the person's tendency to be depressed. It is exactly the size of the inferior frontal cortex in the study of Yifan Hu, Sanda Dolcos that proved to be a determinant of the tendency to negatively perceive natural or even positive events. Next it also determined whether the given subject was in some degree willing to suffer from anxiety. Anxiety had been a feature that mediated a negative relationship between the IFC volume and the measure of the negative deviation. 62 healthy participants were tested by Hu &Dolcos, (2017), who collected brain structure data from neuroimaging scans and used standard questionnaire to determine the level of anxiety and prediction of a negative attitude, performed the task Affective Go / No-Go (AGN). These measures enabled them to investigate the relationship between the volume of gray matter in IFC operoperculiens, the fear of traits and the negative bias of attention. Their results have linked smaller gray matter volumes in the left operative segment of IFC with greater negative bias, further demonstrating that the reduced volume in this region of the brain is associated with negative affective influence through anxiety which could interfere with many dimensions of life and could promote depression.However, this study has been limited and this is mainly due to the low demographic diversity of participants as about 68.6% of the participants were White, with very little age range and everyone with high educational status. Therefore, the appropriateness of generalizing results to the general population has been strongly reduced. However, this study provides information on risk / immunity factors related to anxiety symptoms in students and can contribute to a better understanding of the predisposition and development of psychopathology (Montag et al., 2013). However, it must be admitted that the researchers have reduced the ambiguity regarding the possibility of whether bias negativity can be detected at the structural level and can be marked as the participation of posterior IFC, paying attention to the anxiety and tendency of the person to depression. These findings provide preliminary evidence on the relationship between IFC volume and neuropsychological measurement inducing negative affective and additionally show that this linking of brain behaviour occurs through mechanisms partly shared with guild fear

Third argument

‘Negativity bias’ in risk for depression and anxiety: Brain–body fear circuitry correlates, 5-HTT-LPR and early life stress

Brain neuroimaging research is useful in defining a biological link with a negative attitude, as well as the behaviour that people do. Serotonin-transporter-linked polymorphic region. Which focused on negative (20 items) is conceptualized as hypersensitivity to stress and the expectation of negative results (williams et al., 2009 williams et al., 2010). Serotonergic neurotransmission has been implicated in the pathogenesis of mood disorders as major depressive disorder (nemeroff&owens, 2002; nelissery et al., 2003). In this regard, he undertook, as he claims to be the first, to examine the effect of stress early in life and its interaction with 5-htt-lpr, on the negative attitude and its brain-body correlation. In this study, the effect of allelic variants of the serotonin transporter (5-htt-lpr) on negative polarization and stress, early in life, was analyzed. The self-report measurement of the negative attitude was made in relation to its impact on the brain and body of the correlation of emotion processing.The results showed the interpretation of events is negatively increased for participants with a short allelic variant of the serotonin transporter (5-htt-lpr.) Additionally, the addition of stress associated with early life contributed to the most extreme negative attitude and impact on heart rate and activation of neurons (williams and co-workers, 2009).Observations established the fact that both the negative attitude and the shorter 5-htt-lpr allele were associated with increased activation for the amygdala and its mpfc and anterior projection of the anterior rim during the unconscious processing of fear. Here, the results suggest that the short-circuit allele effect may extend to a conscious fear of major depression and could be compounded by the stress associated with early life.

That was another study example of the negative error, which was consistent with the models of development of depression and anxiety (nemeroff, 2008).

Fourth argument

NEURAL SUBSTRATES OF NEGATIVITY BIAS IN WOMEN WITH AND WITHOUT MAJOR DEPRESSION

As has been previously indicated, the neuroimaging data provided some sufficient evidence for establishment of a link between the high activation of specific regions of the brain with negative bias, providing evidence for its various biological foundations depending on different contributors. As has been shown in two examples, there is not only one region that can be linked to this phenomenon. Another attempt to identify the functional location of the negative error was taken by Jackie K. Gollana,∗,1, Megan Connollya,1, Angel Buchanana, DenadaHoxhaa, Laina Rosebrocka, John Cacioppo b, John Csernanskya, XueWangc. Their research is worth mentioning as it took a look at depressed patients. And as the study aimed to identify regions of the brain associated with a negative attitude to depression, it may be useful to look at the study that studied interested sample. Functional neuroanatomical correlates of the negative attitudes were examined by (FMRI). Sub-samples of depressive and healthy participants with high and low negative attitudes, performed the task during functional imaging of the brain as well as the behavioural task outside the scanner. Such treatment enabled behavioural and functional neuroanatomical analysis of negative attitudes. Their results showed that there was a unique regional difference - more nerve activation in the left lower operational frontal hemorrhage observed in Depressive participants with a higher, in relation to the lower, negative attitude.

In the case of this study, although it had a well-characterized sample of people with depression, the big limitation is that these results concern only people with major depression and it is not known to what extent these results may affect people with less symptoms of depressive disorders. In addition, referring to the sample in this study, only one gender identity was examined, in contrast to the previous one, only women were examined, but again, although to some extent they could be criticized for a small generalizing effect, however, on the other hand caused greater internal validity, taking into account attention to gender differences in neuroanatomical functioning (Ashare et al., 2013, Zaidi, 2010).The strengths of the study include sample size, similarity in demographics between healthy and depressive groups and parallel assessment of both behavioural and neural counting of negative attitudes. In summary, the FMRI study of patients with depression showed left-sided and not right activation of DLPFC with increased preferential processing of negative information. The findings of these researchers contribute to a better understanding of the negative attitudes, indicating a regional biological basis and showing the difference between depressive persons with high and low negative attitudes in the frontal cortex area, known to be associated with language and semantic processing and cognitive control.

Summarising

As indicated among others neuroimaging data have provided some sufficient evidence of the existence of association between high activation of specific brain regions with negativity bias, providing an evidence for its biological basis and has different mechanisms as could be expected.

For example:

Early life stress might strengthen this association. Williams et al. [67] studied the association between early life stress, 5-HTTLPR, limbic activity, and biased attention The regional associations may underlie the negativity bias. The current findings that the pgACC is a potential neuroanatomical correlate of negativity bias suggests that this region may be an appropriate target for neurofeedback techniques that aim to reduce negativity bias and enhance positive perceptions of the outside world; such neurofeedback techniques targeting the pgACC will certainly be the focus of future studies in depressed patients. Understanding the interrelatedness of brain structures, functions and personality traits such as anxiety and their behavioural effects such as negative bias will help scientists to develop interventions to target specific brain regions in healthy populations.Negativity biases and their impact on reactivity to negative emotion are implicated in the mechanisms of risk for depression. The results provide a step towards objective markers of risk for depression which would help the community act regarding preventative programs.