Children at risk for anxiety display elevated threat sensitivity and may inaccurately classify safe stimuli as threatening, a process known as overgeneralization. Little is known about whether such overgeneralization might stem from altered sensory representations of stimuli resembling threat, especially in youth. Here we implement representational similarity analysis of fMRI data to examine the similarity of neural representations of threat versus ambiguous or safe stimuli in threat and perceptual neurocircuitry among children at varying levels of anxiety traits. Three weeks after completing threat conditioning and extinction, children underwent a fMRI extinction recall task, during which they viewed the extinguished threat cue (CS+), safety cue (CS-) and generalization stimuli (GS) consisting of CS-/CS + blends. Multivoxel BOLD signal patterns were measured in seven regions of interest: four emotional areas (ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), anterior insular cortex (AIC), dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), and amygdala) and three perceptual areas (inferior temporal cortex (ITC) and visual areas V1 and V4). Compared to low anxious children, children with high trait anxiety evidenced less neural pattern differentiation between the CS+ and similar GS, particularly in the vmPFC. Together, these results demonstrate the utility of multivariate neuroimaging approaches in arbitrating the relative contributions of perceptual versus emotional sources to threat generalization.

有焦虑风险的儿童表现出较高的威胁敏感性，并且可能不正确地将安全刺激归类为威胁，这一过程被称为过度概括。关于这种过度概括是否可能源于类似威胁的刺激的感觉表示的改变，人们所知甚少，尤其是在青年时期。在这里，我们对功能磁共振成像数据进行代表性相似性分析，以检查在不同程度的焦虑性状的儿童中，在威胁和知觉神经回路中，威胁与模糊或安全刺激的神经表示的相似性。完成威胁调节和灭绝后的三周，孩子们接受了功能磁共振成像灭绝召回任务，在此过程中，他们观察了由CS- / CS +混合物组成的灭绝威胁提示（CS +），安全提示（CS-）和泛化刺激（GS）。在七个感兴趣的区域测量了多体素BOLD信号模式：四个情感区域（前额叶前皮质（vmPFC），前岛皮层皮质（AIC），背侧前额叶皮质（dmPFC）和杏仁核）和三个知觉区域（颞下皮质（ITC） ）和可视区域V1和V4）。与低焦虑儿童相比，高特质焦虑儿童在CS +和类似GS之间表现出较少的神经模式分化，特别是在vmPFC中。在一起，这些结果证明了多元神经影像学方法在仲裁感知和情感来源对威胁泛化的相对贡献中的作用。和杏仁核）和三个知觉区域（颞下皮质（ITC）和视觉区域V1和V4）。与低焦虑儿童相比，高特质焦虑儿童表现出CS +与类似GS之间神经模式的差异较小，尤其是在vmPFC中。在一起，这些结果证明了多元神经影像学方法在仲裁感知和情感来源对威胁泛化的相对贡献中的作用。和杏仁核）和三个知觉区域（颞下皮质（ITC）和视觉区域V1和V4）。与低焦虑儿童相比，高特质焦虑儿童在CS +和类似GS之间表现出较少的神经模式分化，特别是在vmPFC中。在一起，这些结果证明了多元神经影像学方法在仲裁感知和情感来源对威胁泛化的相对贡献中的作用。