Anxiety and error monitoring: Increased error sensitivity or altered expectations?

Compton, Rebecca J.; Carp, Joshua; Chaddock, Laura; Fineman, Stephanie L.; Quandt, Lorna C.; Ratliff, Jeffrey

doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2007.03.006

Cited by 43 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This model predicts that with similar task demands, highanxious participants recruit more cognitive resources (i.e., they are less efficient) than do low-anxious participants to reach the same level of performance. Our behavioral results are consistent with this theory, since trait anxiety did not influence performance (see also Compton et al, 2007;Hajcak et al, 2003). To compensate for this reduced efficiency, the use of more cognitive (or emotional) resources in the high-anxious group could translate as a different recruitment of cognitive control areas in anxiety (for converging evidence, see Braver et al, 2007;Fales et al, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Anxiety not only increases, but also alters early error-monitoring functions

Aarts

2010

Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Anxiety has profound influences on a wide range of cognitive processes, including action monitoring. Event-related brain potential (ERP) studies have shown that anxiety can boost early error detection mechanisms, as reflected by an enhanced error-related negativity (ERN) following errors in high-anxious, as compared with low-anxious, participants. This observation is consistent with the assumption of a gain control mechanism exerted by anxiety onto error-related brain responses within the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). However, whether anxiety simply enhances or, rather, alters early error detection mechanisms remains unsolved. In this study, we compared the performance of low- versus high-trait-anxious participants during a go/no-go task while high-density EEG was recorded. The two groups showed comparable behavioral performance, although levels of state anxiety increased following the task for high-anxious participants only. ERP results confirmed that the ERN/Ne to errors was enhanced for high-anxious, relative to low-anxious, participants. However, complementary topographic analyses revealed that the scalp map of the ERN/Ne was not identical between the two groups, suggesting that anxiety did not merely increase early error detection mechanisms, but also led to a qualitative change in the early appraisal of errors. Inverse solution results confirmed a shift within the ACC for the localization of neural generators underlying the ERN/Ne scalp map in high-anxious participants, corroborating the assumption of an early effect of anxiety on early error-monitoring functions. These results shed new light on the dynamic interplay between anxiety and error-monitoring functions in the human brain

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Anxiety not only increases, but also alters early error-monitoring functions

Aarts

2010

Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is possible that the adolescents in the high anxiety group were more anxious compared to the adolescents included in the low-average group. Anxiety levels or even induced fear have been shown to influence ERP components (Dennis and Chen, 2009;Compton et al, 2007;Moser et al, 2005;Vocat et al, 2008). However, a general or task-induced effect of anxiety might not explain the task specific effects found in the current study.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 67%

Developmental brain alterations in 17 year old boys are related to antenatal maternal anxiety

Mennes

Bergh

Lagae

et al. 2009

Clinical Neurophysiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.-Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research -You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain -You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright, please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. a b s t r a c tObjective: To assess the association between maternal anxiety during pregnancy and the brain activity of 17 year old adolescents performing two cognitive control tasks. Methods: Twenty-three 17 year old boys of mothers whose level of anxiety was measured during pregnancy were investigated using ERP while performing a Go/Nogo paradigm assessing exogenous cognitive control and a Gambling paradigm requiring endogenous cognitive control. Results: No effects of antenatal maternal anxiety were observed in the Go/Nogo paradigm. However, in the Gambling paradigm adolescents of the high anxiety group (n = 8) showed a less efficient pattern of decision making compared to the adolescents in the low-average anxiety group (n = 15). Moreover, only for this task the ERP data showed an enlarged early frontal P2a component in the high anxiety group. Conclusions: The brain activity of adolescents during an endogenous cognitive control task is associated to the level of anxiety experienced by their mother during pregnancy. This association was not observed during an exogenous cognitive control task. Significance: This study indicates that a child's brain functionality is related to its mother's anxiety during pregnancy. Endogenous cognitive control is regarded the cognitive function most affected by the level of antenatal maternal anxiety.

show abstract

“…Such individuals, as a consequence, would be likely to show impaired expectancies around negative events and compensate by maintaining higher levels of vigilance/arousal for bad outcomes, which would be clinically observed in the form of higher anxiety [87], [88]. The observation of significantly higher levels of trait anxiety in the abnormal VTA/SN MDD subgroups supports such a hypothesis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Microstructural Abnormalities in Subcortical Reward Circuitry of Subjects with Major Depressive Disorder

Blood

Iosifescu

Makris³

et al. 2010

PLoS ONE

117

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundPrevious studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) have focused on abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal regions. There has been little investigation in MDD of midbrain and subcortical regions central to reward/aversion function, such as the ventral tegmental area/substantia nigra (VTA/SN), and medial forebrain bundle (MFB).Methodology/Principal FindingsWe investigated the microstructural integrity of this circuitry using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in 22 MDD subjects and compared them with 22 matched healthy control subjects. Fractional anisotropy (FA) values were increased in the right VT and reduced in dorsolateral prefrontal white matter in MDD subjects. Follow-up analysis suggested two distinct subgroups of MDD patients, which exhibited non-overlapping abnormalities in reward/aversion circuitry. The MDD subgroup with abnormal FA values in VT exhibited significantly greater trait anxiety than the subgroup with normal FA values in VT, but the subgroups did not differ in levels of anhedonia, sadness, or overall depression severity.Conclusions/SignificanceThese findings suggest that MDD may be associated with abnormal microstructure in brain reward/aversion regions, and that there may be at least two subtypes of microstructural abnormalities which each impact core symptoms of depression.

show abstract

Anxiety and error monitoring: Increased error sensitivity or altered expectations?

Cited by 43 publications

References 47 publications

Anxiety not only increases, but also alters early error-monitoring functions

Anxiety not only increases, but also alters early error-monitoring functions

Developmental brain alterations in 17 year old boys are related to antenatal maternal anxiety

Microstructural Abnormalities in Subcortical Reward Circuitry of Subjects with Major Depressive Disorder

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About