Neural reactivity to affective stimuli and internalizing symptom dimensions in a transdiagnostic patient sample

Abstract

Background: Internalizing psychopathologies (IPs) are highly comorbid and exhibit substantial overlap, such as aberrant affective reactivity. Neural reactivity to emotional images, measured via the late positive potential (LPP) event-related potential (ERP) component, has been utilized to index affective reactivity in IPs. The LPP is often examined in isolation with a specific disorder, ignoring overlap between IPs. The current study examined how transdiagnostic IP symptom dimensions relate to neural affective reactivity in a highly comorbid patient sample. Methods: Participants (N = 99) completed a battery of IP symptom assessments as well as a target categorization task while viewing pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral images during electroencephalography recording. ERPs to each image valence were averaged from 400 to 1000 ms following picture onset at pooled centroparietal and occipital electrodes to calculate the LPP. A principal components analysis performed on the IP symptom measures resulted in two factors: affective distress/ misery and fear-based anxiety.Results: Fear-based anxiety was associated with enhanced LPP reactivity to unpleasant, but not pleasant, images. Distress/misery was related to attenuated average LPP reactivity across images.Conclusions: Results revealed a dissociable effect of IP symptom factors in a transdiagnostic sample such that enhanced reactivity to negative images was specific to enhanced fear-based anxiety symptoms while distress/misery symptoms predicted blunted affective reactivity. Neural affective reactivity may serve as an objective biological marker to elucidate the nature of psychological concerns in individuals with comorbid IPs.

Robust single‐trial event‐related potentials differentiate between distress and fear disorders

“…Testing of this new proposal for neurobiological support is called for and would increase our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of mental disorders (DeYoung et al, 2023). Recent evidence suggests that measures of brain functioning as indexed by event-related potentials (ERPs) on the electroencephalogram (EEG) aligns more closely to transdiagnostic measures of psychopathology than to categorical taxonomies such as ICD-10 and DSM-5, which impose arbitrary diagnostic thresholds, comorbidity, and symptom heterogeneity within disorders (Donaldson et al, 2020;Granros, 2021;Macedo et al, 2021;Riesel et al, 2022). However, issues inherent in these traditional taxonomies as well as in ERP preprocessing and analysis methods contribute to inconsistent results (Feuerriegel & Bode, 2022).…”

Transdiagnostic psychopathology in the light of robust single‐trial event‐related potentials

“…Mismatch negativity (MMN), an index of auditory change detection, and some other ERP components in auditory oddball paradigms do not seem to be uniquely related to chronic schizophrenia but to symptoms shared by a range of psychotic disorders (Donaldson et al., 2020; Parker et al., 2021). These developments being very recent, only the ERN, CRN, and to a lesser extent the late‐positive potential, have thus far been cast in the light of transdiagnostic psychopathology in the emotional disorders (Granros, 2021). A comprehensive investigation of the associations between other classic ERPs and transdiagnostic markers of psychopathology in the emotional disorders is lacking.…”