Neural correlates of death anxiety

Death anxiety influences multiple facets of human lives and has been quantified using questionnaires. Whether and how self-reports of death anxiety are associated with brain activities remain unclear. We investigated neural correlates of death anxiety by recording brain responses to perceived skulls and examined whether a specific neural response to skulls may predict individual differences in subjective feelings of death anxiety. In three experiments we recorded self-reports of death anxiety and electroencephalography (EEG) signals and magnetoencephalography (MEG) signals in response to line drawings of skulls with face-like configural structures from young healthy adults. EEG results in Experiments 1-2 repeatedly showed that upright compared to inverted skulls evoked an early occipitoparietal negative activity at 120-140 ms after stimulus onset and increased the occipitotemporal N170 amplitude. Importantly, the amplitude of the early occipitoparietal negativity predicted self-reports of death anxiety across individuals. MEG results in Experiment 3 further localized the neural responses to skulls at 120-140 ms in the fusiform and temporal cortices, which also predicted individual differences in self-reports of death anxiety. Our findings of a neural correlate of death anxiety have implications for future research on relationships between death anxiety and mental health.