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The neural basis of improved cognitive performance by threat of shock.

ABSTRACT: Anxiety can have both detrimental and facilitatory cognitive effects. This study investigates the neural substrates of a replicated facilitatory effect of anxiety on sustained attention and response inhibition. This effect consisted of improved performance on the Sustained Attention to Response Task (a Go-NoGo task consisting of 91% Go and 9% NoGo trials) in threat (unpredictable electrical shock) vs safe (no shock) conditions. This study uses the same experimental design with fMRI and relies on an event-related analysis of BOLD signal changes. Findings reveal that threat-related cognitive facilitation (improved NoGo accuracy) is associated with greater activation of a right-lateralized frontoparietal group of regions previously implicated in sustained attention and response inhibition. Moreover, these same regions show decreased activation in the Go trials preceding NoGo errors. During NoGo trials, striatal activity is also greater in the threat vs safe condition, consistent with the notion of enhanced inhibitory processing under threat. These findings identify potential mechanisms by which threat of unpredictable shock can facilitate distinct cognitive functions. A greater understanding of the complex interaction of the anxious state and cognitive processes may have critical clinical implications.

SUBMITTER: Torrisi S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5091680 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The neural basis of improved cognitive performance by threat of shock.

Torrisi Salvatore S Robinson Oliver O O'Connell Katherine K Davis Andrew A Balderston Nicholas N Ernst Monique M Grillon Christian C

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 20160630 11

Anxiety can have both detrimental and facilitatory cognitive effects. This study investigates the neural substrates of a replicated facilitatory effect of anxiety on sustained attention and response inhibition. This effect consisted of improved performance on the Sustained Attention to Response Task (a Go-NoGo task consisting of 91% Go and 9% NoGo trials) in threat (unpredictable electrical shock) vs safe (no shock) conditions. This study uses the same experimental design with fMRI and relies on ...[more]

PMID: 27369069

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Project description:ContextSocial anxiety disorder is thought to involve emotional hyperreactivity, cognitive distortions, and ineffective emotion regulation. While the neural bases of emotional reactivity to social stimuli have been described, the neural bases of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation during social and physical threat, and their relationship to social anxiety symptom severity, have yet to be investigated.ObjectiveTo investigate behavioral and neural correlates of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation in patients and controls during processing of social and physical threat stimuli.DesignParticipants were trained to implement cognitive-linguistic regulation of emotional reactivity induced by social (harsh facial expressions) and physical (violent scenes) threat while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and providing behavioral ratings of negative emotion experience.SettingAcademic psychology department.ParticipantsFifteen adults with social anxiety disorder and 17 demographically matched healthy controls.Main outcome measuresBlood oxygen level-dependent signal and negative emotion ratings.ResultsBehaviorally, patients reported greater negative emotion than controls during social and physical threat but showed equivalent reduction in negative emotion following cognitive regulation. Neurally, viewing social threat resulted in greater emotion-related neural responses in patients than controls, with social anxiety symptom severity related to activity in a network of emotion- and attention-processing regions in patients only. Viewing physical threat produced no between-group differences. Regulation during social threat resulted in greater cognitive and attention regulation-related brain activation in controls compared with patients. Regulation during physical threat produced greater cognitive control-related response (ie, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) in patients compared with controls.ConclusionsCompared with controls, patients demonstrated exaggerated negative emotion reactivity and reduced cognitive regulation-related neural activation, specifically for social threat stimuli. These findings help to elucidate potential neural mechanisms of emotion regulation that might serve as biomarkers for interventions for social anxiety disorder.

Dataset Information

The neural basis of improved cognitive performance by threat of shock.

Publications

The neural basis of improved cognitive performance by threat of shock.

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