PERCEPTION OF THREAT IN MILITARY VETERANS, CADETS, AND CIVILIANS

这个子项目是许多研究子项目中利用 资源由NIH/NCRR资助的中心拨款提供。子项目和 调查员(PI)可能从NIH的另一个来源获得了主要资金， 并因此可以在其他清晰的条目中表示。列出的机构是 该中心不一定是调查人员的机构。 退伍军人、诺维奇军校学员和米德尔伯里大学本科生将被招募参加一项关于威胁感知的研究。参与者将被要求在记录眼球运动和大脑活动的同时，观看图像并听取与其威胁性内容不同的刺激。听觉刺激将由新奇和意想不到的声音组成。视觉刺激将包括穿着传统或非传统服装的中东男子的图像。眼球跟踪设备将记录眼球运动的测量，如注视持续时间、注视位置和凝视持续时间，以评估与威胁相关的视觉注意力差异。大脑中的电活动将使用事件相关电位(ERPs)来记录，事件相关电位捕捉大脑对特定视觉和听觉刺激的反应。这些数据将被分析，以确定不同军事和战斗经验的参与者在大脑活动和眼动模式上的差异。创伤后应激的临床测量也将与观看威胁刺激时的眼球运动和大脑活动的测量相关联。这项研究的目的是了解学员训练和/或战斗暴露等经历如何影响大脑中引导威胁感知的潜在注意机制。

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Military veterans, Norwich cadets, and Middlebury undergraduates will be recruited to participate in a study of threat perception. Participants will be asked to view images and listen to stimuli that vary with respect to their threatening content while eye movements and brain activity are recorded. The auditory stimuli will consist of novel and unexpected sounds. The visual stimuli will include images of middle-eastern men dressed in traditional or nontraditional clothing. Measures of eye movements such as fixation duration, fixation location, and gaze duration will be recorded with eye tracking equipment in order to assess threat related differences in visual attention. Electrical activity in the brain will be recorded using event related potentials (ERPs), which capture the brain's response to specific visual and auditory stimuli. The data will be analyzed for differences in brain activity and eye movement patterns across participants having different levels of military and combat experience. Clinical measures of post-traumatic stress will also be correlated with measures of eye movements and brain activity while viewing threatening stimuli. The goal of this research is to understand how experiences such as cadet training and/or combat exposure affect the underlying attentional mechanisms in the brain that guide the perception of threat.