The neural correlates of impaired inhibitory control in anxiety

• Published in: Neuropsychologia 2011-04, Vol.49 (5), p.1146-1153
• Main Authors: Ansari, Tahereh L., Derakshan, Nazanin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Affectivity. Emotion; Analysis of Variance; Antisaccade; Anxiety; Anxiety - pathology; Anxiety - physiopathology; Attention; Attention - physiology; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain Mapping; Cerebral Cortex - physiopathology; Electroencephalography; Electrophysiology; ERP; Evoked Potentials - physiology; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Inhibition; Inhibition (Psychology); Male; Personality. Affectivity; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time - physiology; Saccades - physiology; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0028-3932; 1873-3514
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.01.019

▸ High-anxious slower than the low-anxious in generating correct antisaccade. ▸ Lower frontocentral negativity prior to correct antisaccades in high-anxious. ▸ No anxiety-related group differences in ERP activity on prosaccade trials. ▸ No anxiety-related group differences in saccade error rates. According to Attentional Control Theory (Eysenck et al., 2007) anxiety impairs the inhibition function of working memory by increasing the influence of stimulus-driven processes over efficient top-down control. We investigated the neural correlates of impaired inhibitory control in anxiety using an antisaccade task. Low- and high-anxious participants performed anti- and prosaccade tasks and electrophysiological activity was recorded. Consistent with previous research high-anxious individuals had longer antisaccade latencies in response to the to-be-inhibited target, compared with low-anxious individuals. Central to our predictions, high-anxious individuals showed lower ERP activity, at frontocentral and central recording sites, than low anxious individuals, in the period immediately prior to onset of the to-be-inhibited target on correct antisaccade trials. Our findings indicate that anxiety interferes with the efficient recruitment of top-down mechanisms required for the suppression of prepotent responses. Implications are discussed within current models of attentional control in anxiety (Bishop, 2009; Eysenck et al., 2007).