Abstract
Impaired cognitive control plays a crucial role in anxiety disorders and is associated with deficient neural mechanisms in the fronto-parietal network. Usually, these deficits were found in tasks with an emotional context. The present study aimed at investigating electrophysiological and vascular signatures from event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in anxiety patients versus healthy controls during an inhibition task integrated in an emotionally neutral context. Neural markers were acquired during the completion of a classical Eriksen flanker task. The focus of data analysis has been the ERPs N200 and P300 and fNIRS activations in addition to task performance. No behavioral or neural group differences were identified. ERP findings showed a larger N2pc and a delayed and reduced P300 for incongruent stimuli. The N2pc modulation suggests the reorienting of attention to salient stimuli, while the P300 indicates longer lasting stimulus evaluation processes due to increased task difficulty. FNIRS did not result in any significant activation potentially suggesting a contribution from deeper brain areas not measurable with fNIRS. The missing group difference in our non-emotional task indicates that no generalized cognitive control deficit but rather a more emotionally driven deficit is present in anxiety patients.
Highlights
Even though anxiety disorders are the most common psychological disorders worldwide [1], we still do not fully understand their underlying principles and neural characteristics
Time Window: 300–400 ms Statistical analyses of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) correlates with correctly answered flanker task trials for the time window 260–300 ms revealed a main effect of congruency (F(1,43) = 7.901, p = 0.007)
The findings of this study support the notion that anxiety patients and healthy controls differentiate between congruent and incongruent flanker stimuli. This was attestable at the behavioral level as both groups showed longer reaction times and more errors for incongruent trials as well as at the neural level indexed by the N2pc and the P300 in the EEG
Summary
Even though anxiety disorders are the most common psychological disorders worldwide [1], we still do not fully understand their underlying principles and neural characteristics. By deepening this knowledge, it may be possible to further optimize anxiety treatments to promote a faster and more sustainable improvement of anxiety symptoms. It may be possible to further optimize anxiety treatments to promote a faster and more sustainable improvement of anxiety symptoms This in turn could relieve health care systems and economies around the world from the distinct burden of high anxiety rates [2,3,4].
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