Lateralization of autonomic activity in response to limb-specific threat

Abstract

In times of stress or danger, the autonomic nervous system (ANS) signals the fight or flight response. A canonical function of ANS activity is to globally mobilize metabolic resources, preparing the organism to respond to threat. Yet a body of research has demonstrated that, rather than displaying a homogenous pattern across the body, autonomic responses to arousing events -- as measured through changes in electrodermal activity (EDA) -- can differ between right and left body locations. Surprisingly, the metabolic function of such ANS asymmetry has not been investigated. In the current study, we investigated whether asymmetric autonomic responses could be induced through limb-specific aversive stimulation. Participants were given mild electric stimulation to either the left or right arm while EDA was monitored bilaterally. Across participants, a strong ipsilateral EDA response bias was observed, with increased EDA response in the hand adjacent to the stimulation. This effect was observable in over 50% of individual subjects. These results demonstrate that autonomic output is more complex than canonical interpretations suggest. We suggest that, in stressful situations, autonomic outputs can prepare either the whole-body fight or flight response, or a simply a limb-localized flick, which can effectively neutralize the threat while minimizing global resource consumption. These findings provide insight into the evolutionary pathway of neural systems processing general arousal by linking observed asymmetry in the peripheral arousal response to a historical leveraging of neural structures organized to mediate responses to localized threat.