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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 Dec 1.
Published in final edited form as: Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging. 2022 Oct 26;327:111560. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2022.111560

Figure 1. fMRI task design.

Figure 1.

The fMRI stress provocation task (adapted from Sinha et al. (2016)) consisted of two blocks representing the stress and neutral-relaxing conditions. Condition order was counterbalanced across participants. Each block consisted of three phases: baseline, provocation, and recovery. During the baseline phase, blank gray images with central fixation cross were displayed for three runs (Runs 1–3). During the provocation phase, participants viewed either stressful or neutral-relaxing images for six runs (Runs 4–9). During each run, 11 images (or gray blanks) were shown in succession for 5 seconds each with a 1-second interstimulus interval (ISI), for a total of 66 seconds (1.1 minutes) per run. During the recovery phase (4 minutes), participants were asked to relax and were not shown any images. Participants were asked to rate their stress and arousal using two-button fMRI response pads. Stress (1 = not at all stressed to 9 = extremely stressed) and arousal (1 = calm/relaxed to 9 = aroused/excited) ratings were collected after each baseline and provocation run and after each recovery phase.