Xiqian Wu1,2 · Xilei Zhang1,2  · Liang Wang1,2 · Yi Jiang1,2

1 State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Science and Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China 

2 Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

Abstract

Despite widespread exposure to stress and threats, why some develop anxiety while others do not remains unclear. We hypothesize that this discrepancy links to unconscious fear memory generalization in safe contexts, a poorly understood area. Here, we tested whether such memories unconsciously bias visual processing and if attention-based control suppresses this effect. Visual orientations paired with threat (in a threatening context) were rendered invisible via fast chromatic flicker above critical flicker-fusion frequency (CFF), then presented in a safe context. Experiment 1 (attended orientation discrimination task) and Experiment 2 (attended duration discrimination task vs. unattended central color detection task) were conducted. EEG revealed significant unconscious fear responses (CS+ vs. CS−) in attended conditions, positively correlated with broad-alpha power (replicated across experiments). No significant responses emerged for unattended stimuli, despite elevated alpha. These findings show unconscious fear distorts visual processing during generalization in a safe context, with top-down attention gating this effect via broad alpha oscillations—prioritizing it when attended and suppressing it when unattended.

Keywords

Unconscious fear; Top-down attention; Alpha oscillations; Visual processing; Signal-to-noise ratio

[SpringerLink]