Extinction-resistant attention to long-term conditioned threat is indexed by selective visuocortical alpha suppression in humans

Abstract

While ERP studies have shown heightened early visual attention to conditioned threat, it is unknown whether this attentional prioritization is sustained throughout later processing stages and whether it is robust to extinction. To investigate sustained visual attention, we assessed visuocortical alpha suppression in response to conditioned and extinguished threat. N = 87 participants underwent a two-day threat conditioning paradigm with acquisition and extinction on one day and a critical recall test one day later. EEG time-frequency analyses revealed that, on Day 2, threat-conditioned vs. safety cues evoked stronger occipital alpha power suppression from 600 to 1200 ms. Notably, this suppression was resistant to extinction. The present study showed for the first time that threat conditioning enhances sustained modulation of visuocortical attention to threat in the long term. The long-term stability and extinction resistance of alpha suppression suggests a crucial role of visuocortical attention mechanisms in the maintenance of learned fears.