The effect of induced anxiety on cognition: threat of shock enhances aversive processing in healthy individuals |
| |
Authors: | Oliver J. Robinson Allison M. Letkiewicz Cassie Overstreet Monique Ernst Christian Grillon |
| |
Affiliation: | Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, NIMH, 15K North Drive, MSC 2670, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. oliver.j.robinson@gmail.com |
| |
Abstract: | Individuals with anxiety disorders demonstrate altered cognitive performance including (1) cognitive biases towards negative stimuli (affective biases) and (2) increased cognitive rigidity (e.g., impaired conflict adaptation) on affective Stroop tasks. Threat of electric shock is frequently used to induce anxiety in healthy individuals, but the extent to which this manipulation mimics the cognitive impairment seen in anxiety disorders is unclear. In this study, 31 healthy individuals completed an affective Stroop task under safe and threat-of-shock conditions. We showed that threat (1) enhanced aversive processing and abolished a positive affective bias but (2) had no effect on conflict adaptation. Threat of shock thus partially models the effects of anxiety disorders on affective Stroop tasks. We suggest that the affective state of anxiety—which is common to both threat and anxiety disorders—modulates the neural inhibition of subcortical aversive processing, whilst pathologies unique to anxiety disorders modulate conflict adaptation. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 PubMed SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|