Abstract
Trait anxiety is an important phenotype in the prediction of stress-induced neuropsychiatric disorders. While the role of trait anxiety in mental effort and cognitive impairment is well documented, much less is known about its influence on motivated behaviors and physical effort. Here, we investigated trait anxiety-related differences in behavioral and neural responses in an effort-related monetary incentive delay task. Participants prompted with different incentive levels could exert handgrip responses to earn monetary rewards while a 256-channel electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Participants’ performance was linearly dependent on incentive level, with higher stakes prompting better accuracy and higher grip force. Importantly, we found a striking association between trait anxiety and incentive-related grip force; effort exertion was related to incentive level only in high-anxious individuals. In analyses of neural efficiency associated with effort preparation involving Contingent-negative variation (CNV), we found that the CNV amplitude was sensitive to monetary incentive levels. Source imaging analyses of CNV indicated increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for the highest incentive level. Importantly, we found a significant interaction between trait anxiety and incentive level on CNV modulation at the interval ranging from −2610 to −2510 ms, with greater CNV responses to the lower monetary incentive sizes in high anxiety. Subsequent mediation analyses supported a mediation of the ACC activation on the association between trait anxiety and incentive-selective grip force. Our study reveals a role for ACC in trait anxiety-related differences on incentive processing, when rewards are dependent on effortful performance.
Highlights
Individual differences in personality are crucial in determining human behaviors and are related to overall health and well-being[1]
In addition to revealing lower grip force exerted by highcompared with low-trait-anxious individuals for small incentives, we found a striking association between trait anxiety and ΔGrip
In our modified monetary incentive delay (MID) task, effort requirements were maintained constant across different incentives; i.e., the same grip force was required to earn the different rewards
Summary
Individual differences in personality are crucial in determining human behaviors and are related to overall health and well-being[1]. The identification of neurobiological mechanisms underlying variation in trait anxiety. Trait anxiety is a personality dimension related to the degree to which events, in general, are perceived as potentially threatening[4,5]. Trait anxiety has been shown to relate to several aspects of cognitive functioning[6,7,8,9,10]. High-trait anxiety has been characterized by impaired attentional control under both threat[11] and nonthreat conditions[10]. Despite these functional impairments, performance (i.e., effectiveness; typically measured as response accuracy) in demanding cognitive tasks is rarely impaired in a high-anxious individual [e.g., refs. High anxiety seems to impair processing efficiency (related to resource investment), as high-
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
