The impact of induced anxiety on response inhibition

Abstract

Anxiety has wide reaching effects on cognition; evidenced most prominently by the “difficulties concentrating” seen in anxiety disorders, and by adaptive harm-avoidant behaviors adopted under threatening circumstances. Despite having critical implications for daily-living, the precise impact of anxiety on cognition is as yet poorly quantified. Here we attempt to clarify the impact of anxiety on sustained attention and response inhibition via a translational anxiety induction in healthy individuals (N = 22). Specifically, in a within-subjects design, participants completed the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) in which subjects withhold responses to infrequent no-go stimuli under threat of unpredictable electrical shock (anxious) and safe (non-anxious) conditions. Different studies have argued that this task measures either (1) attention lapses due to off-task thinking or (2) response inhibition; two cognitive functions which are likely impacted by anxiety. We show that threat of shock significantly reduces errors of commission on the no-go trials relative to the safe condition whilst having no effect on go trials or overall reaction time (RT). We suggest that this is because threat of shock during SART promotes response inhibition. In particular we argue that, by virtue of frequency, subjects acquire a habitual bias toward a go response which impairs no-go performance and that threat of shock improves the ability to withhold these prepotent responses. This improved response inhibition likely falls within the range of adaptive cognitive functions which promote cautious harm avoidance under threatening conditions, although a range of alternative explanations for this effect is discussed.

The impact of threat of shock-induced anxiety on memory encoding and retrieval

“…Threat of shock was administered according to a standardized procedure (e.g., Robinson et al 2013c) using a digitimer DS5. The shocks were administered to the participant's wrist of their nondominant hand.…”

Event-Related Brain Potentials in the Study of Inhibition: Cognitive Control, Source Localization and Age-Related Modulations

“…A number of studies have established and examined specific categories of inhibitory phenomena, such as response or motor inhibition (the process of inhibiting a planned response or movement; Robinson et al 2013), lateral inhibition (the capacity of an excited neuron to reduce the activity of its neighbors ;Bridgeman 2006), prepulse inhibition (when a stimulus inhibits the startle blink reflex to a subsequent stronger startle stimulus; Dawson et al 2004), inhibition of return (inhibition produced by a peripheral cue or target; Possin et al 2009), knowledge or semantic inhibition (inhibition responsible for reducing the activation of the inappropriate knowledge for the context; Debruille 2007), and proactive interference (i.e., the disruption of behaviour due to the influence of antecedent inforation that is no longer relevant and has to be inhibited; Yi and Friedman 2011). In opposition to these types of inhibition, several authors (Hasher and Zacks 1988;Collette et al 2009) have proposed that inhibition is a 4 unitary process that integrates the following three different but related functions: the access function (responsible for the prevention of irrelevant information entry); the deletion function (responsible for the suppression of information that either is or has become irrelevant); and the restrain function (responsible for the prevention of access to relevant but contextually inappropriate responses).…”

“…Several of these studies have examined the relevance of inhibitory processes in normal aging (Mayas et al 2012;Turner and Spreng 2012;Haring et al 2013;Wostmann et al 2013), as well as a variety of clinical conditions, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD; Collette et al 2009; C. Thomas et al 2010;Cheng et al 2012), mild cognitive impairment (MCI; Belleville et al 2007), traumatic brain injury (TBI; Dimoska-Di Marco et al 2011), depression (Dai and Feng 2011;Bobb et al 2012), anxiety (Robinson et al 2013), schizophrenia (Hughes et al 2012), fibromyalgia (Mercado et al 2013), attention deficithyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Senderecka et al 2012), alcoholism (Padilla et al 2011) and psychopathy (Verona et al 2012). Thomas et al 2009); Stop-signal (Bekker et al 2005;van Boxtel et al 2001);Eriksen Flanker (Wild-Wall et al 2008;Neuhaus et al 2007); Stroop (Hanslmayr et al 2008); and NP (Gibbons et al 2006;Kathmann et al 2006).…”

Psychiatric Disorders And Eye: Optical Coherent Tomography In Psychiatry Aspect

“…Anksiyete bozukluðu olan hastalarda özellikle OKB'u olan hastalarda bazý kognitif deðiþiklikler gösterdiði ve bu durumun göz hareketleri ile baðlantýlý olduðunu gösteren çalýþmalar mevcuttur (41)(42)(43). OKB olan hastalarda göz hareketleri ile ilgili yapýlmýþ bir derlemede; OKB hastalarýnda göz hareketlerinin latansýnda bir uzama olduðunu, OKB'nin disfonksiyonal bazý alanlarý ile motor kontrol alanlarý arasýnda güçlü baðlantýlar olduðu öne sürülmüþtür (44).…”