The neural substrates of response inhibition to negative information across explicit and implicit tasks in GAD patients: electrophysiological evidence from an ERP study

Abstract

Background: It has been established that the inability to inhibit a response to negative stimuli is the genesis of anxiety. However, the neural substrates of response inhibition to sad faces across explicit and implicit tasks in general anxiety disorder (GAD) patients remain unclear.Methods: Electrophysiological data were recorded when subjects performed two modified emotional go/no-go tasks in which neutral and sad faces were presented: one task was explicit (emotion categorization), and the other task was implicit (gender categorization).Results: In the explicit task, electrophysiological evidence showed decreased amplitudes of no-go/go difference waves at the N2 interval in the GAD group compared to the control group. However, in the implicit task, the amplitudes of no-go/go difference waves at the N2 interval showed a reversed trend. Source localization analysis on no-go/N2 components revealed a decreased current source density (CSD) in the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex in GAD individuals relative to controls. In the implicit task, the left superior temporal gyrus and the left inferior parietal lobe showed enhanced activation in GAD individuals and may compensate for the dysfunction of the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex.Conclusion: These findings indicated that the processing of response inhibition to socially sad faces in GAD individuals was interrupted in the explicit task. However, this processing was preserved in the implicit task. The neural substrates of response inhibition to sad faces were dissociated between implicit and explicit tasks.

Disorder- and emotional context-specific neurofunctional alterations during inhibitory control in generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder

“…On the behavioral level, the observed pattern in the present study partly resembles findings in previous studies (24,25,31) such that MDD patients showed lower accuracy while GAD patients exhibited comparable accuracy with HC. However, while the previous studies reported emotion-specific inhibitory control deficits in MDD patients the present study found a general impairment in no-go accuracy irrespective of emotional context.…”

“…In comparison, research on emotional-context dependent neurofunctional alterations in GAD is scarce. One study reported decreased right DLPFC amplitudes in GAD patients compared to healthy controls during inhibition of negative information in an explicit emotional inhibition paradigm, while the patients exhibited intact processing during an implicit emotional inhibition paradigm (31).…”

Influence of spatial frequency and emotion expression on face processing in patients with panic disorder

“…EPN waveform in panic disorder (PD) and healthy controls (HCs) occurring by different SFs and emotion at the averaged PO7 and PO8. evoked largely by facial emotional expressions, such as fear and threat rather than neutral expressions (Rossignol et al, 2005;Yu et al, 2015). However, there is inconsistent evidence regarding whether people with anxiety disorder show abnormal VPP compared to healthy subjects.…”

“…However, there is inconsistent evidence regarding whether people with anxiety disorder show abnormal VPP compared to healthy subjects. Yu et al (2015) found that VPP amplitude was significantly increased, and latency was shorter in sad faces compared to neutral faces. In addition, VPP amplitude was larger as a trend level in patients with generalised anxiety disorder compared to HCs (Yu et al, 2015).…”

“…Yu et al (2015) found that VPP amplitude was significantly increased, and latency was shorter in sad faces compared to neutral faces. In addition, VPP amplitude was larger as a trend level in patients with generalised anxiety disorder compared to HCs (Yu et al, 2015). Conversely, Rossignol et al (2005) argued that VPP was not affected by emotions because there was no significant difference between different facial expressions (Rossignol et al, 2005).…”