Looming animate and inanimate threats: The response of the amygdala and periaqueductal gray
Open accessAbstract
Looming stimuli are processed as threatening and activate basic neural defense systems. However, it is unclear how animacy information modulates this response. Participants (N = 25) viewed threatening or neutral images that were either animate (animals) or inanimate (objects) and which either approached (loomed) or receded from the participant. The amygdala was responsive to emotional, animacy, and looming information (particularly to looming threats and looming animate stimuli). Periaqueductal gray was also sensitive to emotional information and particularly responsive to looming threats. The data are interpreted within category-specific models of the amygdala and temporal cortex.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
A bias towards looming and approaching stimuli has been observed in structures directly involved in orchestrating the behavioral response to pain and threatening stimuli, such as the periaqueductal grey.
“Supporting this hypothesis, a bias towards looming and approaching stimuli has been also observed in structures directly involved in orchestrating the behavioral response to pain and threatening stimuli, such as the periaqueductal grey (Mobbs et al. 2007; Coker-Appiah et al. 2013; Vieira et al. 2020).”
From Neuroanatomical correlates of peripersonal space: bridging the gap between perception, action, emotion and social cognition (2024) · cites this paper as Coker-Appiah et al. 2013
The Results (fMRI Results, PAG; page not provided) show greater PAG activity for looming threats than for receding threats. They also report no overall effect of looming in the PAG, so the source supports a bias for looming threatening stimuli, not for looming stimuli generally. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 38 · Cited by 73
- Authors
- Coker-Appiah, D. S., White, S. F., Clanton, R., Yang, J., Martin, A., & Blair, R. J. R.
- Affiliations
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Peking University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Coker-Appiah, Dionne S.
- Venue
- Social Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2013-11
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 621-630
- ISSN
- 1747-0919 (ISSN-L)
- 1747-0927
- PMC
- PMC3919685
- OpenAlex
- W2030444985
- Cited by
- 73
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 1.64
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Social Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (1‑ZIA‑MH002860‑08, ZIAMH002860)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- looming stimuli, threat perception, animacy, amygdala, periaqueductal gray, temporal cortex, threat response
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Amygdala, Animals, Behavior, Brain Mapping, Fear, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Periaqueductal Gray, Photic Stimulation, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
