The electrophysiology correlation of the cognitive bias in anxiety under uncertainty

Shiyan Yang,Yufeng Wang,Feng Zou,Junye Xu,Meng Zhang,Zhaoxian Li,Xin Wu,Li Wang

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-68427-y

Abstract

The intolerance of uncertainty (IU) model holds that excessive emotional response under uncertain conditions is conducive to the maintenance of anxiety, and individuals with a high anxiety level may exhibit a negative bias and experience anxiety when processing uncertain information. However, the dynamic electrophysiological correlation of this negative bias is not clear. Therefore, we used an adapted study–test paradigm to explore the changes in the electroencephalography (EEG) of subjects when processing uncertain cues and certain cues (certain neutral and certain threatening) and correlated the differences with anxiety level. The behavioral results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the trait anxiety score and β value under the threatening condition, which indicated that individuals with high trait anxiety take a more conservative approach in the face of negative stimuli. The results of EEG showed that during the test stage, the components N1 and P2, which are related to early perception, had significant conditional main effects. Meanwhile, under uncertain conditions, the N1 peak was positively correlated with the state anxiety score. In the study stage, we found that the N400 component was significantly larger in the early study stage than in the late study stage under uncertain conditions. In sum, individuals with high anxiety levels had a negative bias in the early cue processing of the test stage, and anxiety did not affect the study stage.

Highlights

Uneasiness and worry about uncertain events, attention bias, and persistent attention[6,15]
According to previous s tudies[28], the visual cortex, bilateral fusiform gyrus and right parahippocampal gyrus are significantly active when processing the uncertain cues, which is similar to the neural mechanism of processing threatening cues, so we speculated that under uncertain conditions, the processing of uncertain information may be similar to the processing of certain threatening information, and the differential event-related potential (ERP) may be a component related to early perceptual processing
We found a main effect of the correct rate in recognition for cue type (F(2, 123) = 41.65, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.404), the follow-up comparisons demonstrated that this was driven by certain neutral condition, which had lower correct rate compared to the certain threatening condition (p < 0.001) and uncertain condition (p < 0.001)

Summary

Introduction

Uneasiness and worry about uncertain events, attention bias (early attention bias), and persistent attention (continuous processing of negative information)[6,15]. According to previous s tudies[28], the visual cortex, bilateral fusiform gyrus and right parahippocampal gyrus are significantly active when processing the uncertain cues, which is similar to the neural mechanism of processing threatening cues, so we speculated that under uncertain conditions, the processing of uncertain information may be similar to the processing of certain threatening information, and the differential ERP may be a component related to early perceptual processing. We hypothesized that during the encoding of cues by subjects in the test stage, there would be differences in the early components of perception between the uncertain and certain condition, such as the early visual perceptual N1 ERP component changes[30] In support of this idea, a study found that the N1 amplitude changes when participants use numbers compared to verbal probabilities to represent the uncertainties that they face on a decision-making task. We speculated that the learning of uncertain cues might elicit the N400 component, during the study stage, given its role in semantic learning[35,36]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion