Abstract
BackgroundEmotion-related attentional bias is implicated in the aetiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Electroencephalogram (EEG) biofeedback can obviously improve the anxiety disorders and reduce stress level, and can also enhance attention performance in healthy subjects. The present study examined the effects and mechanisms of EEG biofeedback training on the attentional bias of high trait anxiety (HTA) individuals toward negative stimuli.ResultsEvent-related potentials were recorded while HTA (n=24) and nonanxious (n=21) individuals performed the color-word emotional Stroop task. During the emotional Stroop task, HTA participants showed longer reaction times and P300 latencies induced by negative words, compared to nonanxious participants.The EEG biofeedback significantly decreased the trait anxiety inventory score and reaction time in naming the color of negative words in the HTA group. P300 latencies evoked by negative stimuli in the EEG biofeedback group were significantly reduced after the alpha training, while no significant changes were observed in the sham biofeedback group after the intervention.ConclusionThe prolonged P300 latency is associated with attentional bias to negative stimuli in the HTA group. EEG biofeedback training demonstrated a significant improvement of negative emotional attentional bias in HTA individuals, which may be due to the normalization of P300 latency.
Highlights
Emotion-related attentional bias is implicated in the aetiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders
Simple-effect tests revealed that Reaction time (RT) toward negative words were longer in the high trait anxiety (HTA) group compared to the NA group (F(1, 35)=5.09, p=0.03)
The interaction between word type and group was significant (F(1, 47)=3.88, p=0.044), and simple-effect tests found that P300 latencies induced by negative words were longer in the HTA group than in the NA group (F(1, 35)=6.43, p=0.016)
Summary
Emotion-related attentional bias is implicated in the aetiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders. The present study examined the effects and mechanisms of EEG biofeedback training on the attentional bias of high trait anxiety (HTA) individuals toward negative stimuli. A number of studies have shown that anxious individuals respond more slowly to negative words than do healthy controls, suggesting that anxious individuals tend to allocate their attention selectively toward negative-related information [5,8]. This attentional bias may play an important role in the onset and maintenance of anxiety disorders. An effective way to control or improve this emotion-related
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