Clinical anxiety promotes excessive response inhibition

Grillon, Christian; Robinson, Oliver J.; O’Connell, Katherine; Davis, Andrew A.; Alvarez, Gabriella; Pine, Daniel S.; Ernst, Monique

doi:10.1017/s0033291716002555

Cited by 45 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 58 publications

(133 reference statements)

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“…Prior work has shown that participants with clinical anxiety showed impaired “go” accuracy overall compared to controls on this, suggesting that there is an overactive adaptive defensive mechanism in clinical anxiety17. Consequently, we suggest that the effect of threat on reaction time observed here could be a reflection of this behavioural inhibition.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 48%

Towards an emotional ‘stress test’: a reliable, non-subjective cognitive measure of anxious responding

Aylward¹,

Robinson²

2017

Sci Rep

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Response to stress or external threats is a key factor in mood and anxiety disorder aetiology. Current measures of anxious responding to threats are limited because they largely rely on retrospective self-report. Objectively quantifying individual differences in threat response would be a valuable step towards improving our understanding of anxiety disorder vulnerability. Our goal is to therefore develop a reliable, objective, within-subject ‘stress-test’ of anxious responding. To this end, we examined threat-potentiated performance on an inhibitory control task from baseline to 2–4 weeks (n = 50) and again after 5–9 months (n = 22). We also describe single session data for a larger sample (n = 157) to provide better population-level estimates of task performance variance. Replicating previous findings, threat of shock improved distractor accuracy and slowed target reaction time on our task. Critically, both within-subject self-report measures of anxiety (ICC = 0.66) and threat-potentiated task performance (ICC = 0.58) showed clinically useful test-retest reliability. Threat-potentiated task performance may therefore hold promise as a non-subjective measure of individual anxious responding.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 48%

Towards an emotional ‘stress test’: a reliable, non-subjective cognitive measure of anxious responding

Aylward¹,

Robinson²

2017

Sci Rep

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“…On the surface, the fact that attenuation of the startle reflex is only found when viewing pleasant pictures in an anticipatory context seems to support recent studies finding that threat of shock may facilitate response inhibition (e.g., Grillon et al, 2017a, 2017b). In these studies, infrequent NO-GO signals (interspersed among frequent GO signals) showed fewer errors when participants were under threat of shock (i.e., better able to inhibit responses), suggesting that stress facilitates response inhibition, which the researchers note could also be mediated by enhanced sensory processing.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Startle reflex modulation during threat of shock and “threat” of reward

2017

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During threat of shock, the startle reflex is potentiated, suggesting modulation by defensive mobilization. To determine whether startle potentiation is specific to aversive anticipation, startle reflexes were measured in the context of either aversive or appetitive anticipation in a between-subject study. Participants wore a device on the wrist that could deliver electrical shock (n = 49), or vibrotactile stimulation indicating monetary reward (n = 48). Cues signaling "threat" or "safe" periods were presented alone, or accompanied by presentation of affective and neutral pictures on half of the trials. Results indicated that the startle reflex was significantly potentiated when anticipating either shock or reward, compared to safe periods, both when no picture was presented, as well as during picture viewing. The difference between threat and safety in both reflex magnitude and skin conductance changes was larger for those anticipating shock, suggesting that the aversive context was more motivationally engaging. The pattern of reflex modulation as a function of picture valence varied under threat and safety, but was identical in the shock and reward groups, consistent with a hypothesis that anticipation of either aversive or appetitive events prompts heightened perceptual vigilance, potentiating the acoustic startle reflex.

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“…Prior work has linked anxiety-related symptoms to enhanced EF abilities, including better performance monitoring, working memory, and response inhibition. 13,23,30,48–50 Thus, increased ability of some EF components may serve to cause or maintain certain clinical symptoms related to fear. Alternatively, at least in a community sample, anxiety or other subthreshold symptoms may improve certain EF functions 51 or task motivation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…18,20,28,29 Notably, some work found links between higher EF ability and anxiety symptomatology in both children and adults. 13,23,30,31 For example, White et al 23 found that enhanced inhibition predicted higher levels of anxiety in children at temperamental risk for anxiety.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Evaluation of the Specificity of Executive Function Impairment in Developmental Psychopathology

White

Moore

Calkins

et al. 2017

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psych

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Objective Deficits in executive function (EF) are common in neuropsychiatric disorders, but the specificity of these deficits remains unclear. The aim of the current study was to elucidate the pattern of EF impairment across psychopathologies in children and adolescents. We assessed associations among components of EF with dimensions of psychopathology, including an overall psychopathology factor. Method Participants (8–21 years) were from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort (n=9,498). Data from a structured clinical screening interview were reduced into five dimensional domains using factor analyses: overall psychopathology, anxious-misery, fear, externalizing, and psychosis. EF components of attentional vigilance, response inhibition, conceptual flexibility, and working memory were assessed. Associations between the clinical dimensions and both general EF ability and specific EF components were examined. Results EF ability showed both common and domain-specific associations with clinical symptoms. General EF was directly associated with general psychopathology, anxious-misery, and psychosis domains, but not with the fear or externalizing domains. For the EF subcomponents, differences emerged in the magnitude and direction of association between the components and clinical domains. Poorer EF was typically associated with increased symptoms across clinical domains; however, in some instances, better EF ability was associated with greater symptom burden, particularly in the fear domain. Conclusion EF has widespread associations with psychopathology in youth. Findings reveal some overlap in the type of EF impairment across clinical phenotypes, as indicated by similar patterns of associations between some clinical symptoms and EF. However, findings also revealed domain-specific associations with EF that differed across EF components and clinical domains.

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Clinical anxiety promotes excessive response inhibition

Cited by 45 publications

References 58 publications

Towards an emotional ‘stress test’: a reliable, non-subjective cognitive measure of anxious responding

Towards an emotional ‘stress test’: a reliable, non-subjective cognitive measure of anxious responding

Startle reflex modulation during threat of shock and “threat” of reward

An Evaluation of the Specificity of Executive Function Impairment in Developmental Psychopathology

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