Abstract
It has been observed that trait anxiety easily leads to conflict maladaptation under conflict circumstances. However, it remains unclear whether the precise neural mechanisms underlying the effects of high trait anxiety (HTA) on cognitive control are consistent in high trait anxious individuals, with and without anxiety disorders. The present study recruited 29 healthy volunteers with low trait anxiety (LTA), 37 healthy volunteers with HTA, and 23 patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). All participants completed demographic information and self-report measures of trait anxiety and depression. Then, they performed the emotional flanker task with event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded. Behavioral data manifested that, relative to LTA individuals, GAD patients displayed prolonged response times and increased error rates, while HTA individuals showed intact response times and accuracies. Event-related potential (ERP) data revealed that HTA individuals exhibited a trend toward more negative N2 amplitudes for conflict detection. By contrast, both HTA and GAD individuals displayed decreased P3 amplitudes for conflict resolution. ERP results indicated that both HTA and GAD individuals exhibited conflict maladaptation on the N2 amplitude. Correlation analyses also showed that the increased anxiety symptoms were associated with longer reaction times, more error rates, lower P3 amplitudes, and more perturbations in conflict adaptation on reaction times and N2 amplitudes. Our results demonstrated a severely impaired cognitive control in GAD patients while a moderately impaired cognitive control in HTA individuals. Trait anxiety can indeed serve as a predominant factor at the onset and in the maintenance of GAD. Therefore, the trait anxiety reducing strategies may provide significant therapeutic gains.
Highlights
Increasing evidence has demonstrated that trait anxiety is related to impaired executive control of attention [1]
Using event-related brain potentials, we examined cognitive control in an emotional flanker task among non-clinical indi viduals with low trait anxiety (LTA), non-clinical individuals with high trait anxiety (HTA), and patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
The behavioral results revealed that GAD patients had prolonged response times and increased error rates in emotional flanker task as compared to LTA and HTA individuals
Summary
Increasing evidence has demonstrated that trait anxiety is related to impaired executive control of attention [1]. Anxiety has been considered to be able to inhibit attention, Impaired Cognitive Control in Trait Anxiety and it may be harder for trait anxious individuals to suppress threat-related irrelevant stimuli [2, 3] These deficits primarily affect processing efficiency, without adverse effects on performance effectiveness [1]. In some cases participants with high anxiety show no greater evidence of disrupted attentional control behaviorally, but need to use more cognitive resources to perform at a level-standard relative to persons with low anxiety. These viewpoints, have not been systematically tested. It remains unclear whether the precise neural mechanisms underlying the effects of high trait anxiety (HTA) on cognitive control are consistent in high trait anxious individuals, with and without anxiety disorders
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