Refocus on stopping! Replication of reduced right amygdala reactivity to negative, visual primes during inhibition of motor responses

Several practices contribute to low replication rates in neuroimaging; unreported analytical flexibility, publication biases, the lack of data sharing, the use of underpowered samples, and many more. In the current study, we tried to replicate emotional interference during motor response inhibition in a sample of N = 57 healthy students at a different study site. The failure to inhibit impulses in highly emotional situations is a characteristic of many mental disorders. Apart from this, exaggerated emotional responses can debilitate social and cognitive functioning in healthy participants. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was acquired while participants performed a combined stop signal and Simon task with neutral and negative, visual primes. Negative, visual primes led to prolonged reaction times and stopping latencies. FMRI data showed that negative, visual primes led to increased activation in the bilateral amygdala and enhanced visual processing. Consistent with other studies on emotional interference, we observed decreased activation in regions of the central-executive network and reduced deactivation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex for negative trials. Replicating the results of our former studies (Kampa et al., 2018, 2020), we found an interaction effect in the right amygdala. Concurrent inhibition of motor responses thus seemed to downregulate the processing of negative stimuli in the right amygdala. We performed exploratory brain-behavior correlation analyses to test if increased right amygdala activation to negative primes was associated with a decrement in performance. We found no such relationship; however, because of the low statistical power, we cannot decide conclusively on the relationship between the right amygdala, and behavioral interference. We discuss potential solutions for overcoming the power problem associated with brain-behavior correlation analyses.