Participants completed an archival challenge paradigm, which robustly and consistently elicits threat-related reactivity of the amygdala.38–40 The paradigm consisted of four blocks of a face-processing task interleaved with five blocks of a sensorimotor control task. During the face-processing task, participants viewed a trio of faces (expressing either anger or fear) and selected one of two faces (bottom) that was identical to a target face (top). Each face-processing block consisted of six images, balanced for sex and target affect (angry or fearful), all of which were derived from a standard set of facial affect pictures.41 During the sensorimotor control blocks, participants viewed a trio of simple geometric shapes (circles and vertical and horizontal ellipses) and selected one of two shapes (bottom) that were identical to a target shape (top). Each sensorimotor control block consisted of six different shape trios. All blocks were preceded by a brief instruction (‘Match faces’ or ‘Match shapes’) that lasted 2 s. In the face-processing blocks, each of the six face trios was presented for 4 s with a variable inter-stimulus interval of 2–6 s (mean, 4
