Behavioral and neural stability of attention bias to threat in healthy adolescents

Abstract

Considerable translational research on anxiety examines attention bias to threat and the efficacy of attention training in reducing symptoms. Imaging research on the stability of brain functions engaged by attention bias tasks could inform such research. Perturbed fronto-amygdala function consistently arises in attention bias research on adolescent anxiety. The current report examines the stability of the activation and functional connectivity of these regions on the dot-probe task. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activation and connectivity data were acquired with the dot-probe task in 39 healthy youth (f =18, Mean Age = 13.71 years, SD = 2.31) at two time points, separated by approximately nine weeks. Intraclass-correlations demonstrate good reliability in both neural activation for the ventrolateral PFC and task-specific connectivity for fronto-amygdala circuitry. Behavioral measures showed generally poor test-retest reliability. These findings suggest potential avenues for future brain imaging work by highlighting brain circuitry manifesting stable functioning on the dot-probe attention bias task.

Association of Irritability and Anxiety With the Neural Mechanisms of Implicit Face Emotion Processing in Youths With Psychopathology

“…Of note, recent data suggest that connectivity measures may be more stable than activation measures. 41 This may be relevant, not only to prior reports on anxiety, but also to our current findings, which are more robust for connectivity than for activation.…”

Attention Bias Modification (ABM): Review of Effects of Multisession ABM Training on Anxiety and Threat-Related Attention in High-Anxious Individuals

“…Eye-tracking and neural measures of AB and attention control can be included to complement RT-based measures and may provide a clearer delineation of component processes (Britton et al, 2013; Chen et al, 2015; Holmes, Mogg, de Fockert, Nielsen, & Bradley, 2014; Mogg & Bradley, 2016; Waters & Craske, 2016; White et al, 2016). …”

The human body odor compound androstadienone leads to anger-dependent effects in an emotional Stroop but not dot-probe task using human faces

“…Thus, it might be that subconscious or very short cue presentation times have greater potential to elicit a strong attentional bias and thereby may be more prone to experimental interventions like AND exposure. In this study we decided for the commonly used face presentation time of 500 ms [22, 44, 58, 59] as also in our Stroop task we had opted for a conscious stimulus presentation time of 1000 ms. Taken together we ask to consider our null-results concerning AND-effects on visual cueing only preliminary and urge to include both shorter cue presentation times and eye-tracking in future studies.…”