Strategy bias in the emotion regulation of high trait anxiety individuals: An investigation of underlying neural signatures using ERPs.

Abstract

Objective: Previous studies have employed self-report measures to investigate emotion regulation (ER) strategy biases in individuals with anxiety. We investigated the neural signatures underlying ER strategy biases. Method: Twenty individuals with high trait anxiety (HTA) and twenty individuals with low trait anxiety (LTA) completed both the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and ER tasks. During the tasks, participants were required to passively view, reappraise, and suppress expression while viewing negative images. Event-related potential (ERP) indexes: P2 (an early positive component of the latency around 200ms) and late positive potential (LPP) were adopted to examine the reliability of ER strategy bias in early and later stages during ER procedure. Results: Results of the questionnaire indicated that trait anxiety level was positively correlated with habitual suppression use. ERP results revealed that, in LTA individuals, P2 amplitudes were reduced during both reappraisal and suppression strategy use. HTA individuals, however, showed no significant differences in P2 amplitudes between passive-view and regulation conditions. Furthermore, during the reappraisal block, a reduction of LPP was only observed in the LTA group, while HTA individuals showed a relatively more pronounced reduction in LPP during the application of the suppression strategy. Conclusion: Individuals in the HTA group do not demonstrate the application of effectively strategies during the initial stages of ER process, perhaps due to the presence of an automatic negative bias. While during the later stages of ER, HTA individuals demonstrated successful use of suppression but were deficient in voluntarily applying reappraisal techniques.

When expanding training from working memory to emotional working memory: not only improving explicit emotion regulation but also implicit negative control for anxious individuals

“…Specifically, we found that individuals who conducted WMT showed significant reductions in LPP during the process of cognitive reappraisal. Even if the lack of reflection on subjective ratings, the modulated neurological indicator (which might exclude the demand characteristics and be more sensitive, Pan et al, 2019) implied the improvements in reappraisal ability among WMT trainees. Indeed, the increased self-reported positive refocusing in two WMT groups also provided consistent evidence.…”

“…We also examined distraction as another explicit emotion regulation manner but found no difference for its LPP reduction between the training groups and the control group. In fact, compared with reappraisal, distraction was considered to involve less cognitively demanding and top-down control (Schönfelder, Kanske, Heissler, & Wessa, 2014) and was also found to be less impaired in anxious individuals (Pan et al, 2019). Therefore, it is difficult to be influenced by cognitive training.…”

“…According to the grand averaging waveform and distribution of topographic map of all subjects participated in the current study, as well as the previous literature involving LPP as an indicator of emotion regulation (e.g. Hajcak and Nieuwenhuis, 2006; Pan et al, 2019; Thiruchselvam et al, 2011; Xiu et al, 2018), a time window of 350–800 ms (typically early LPP) was selected for LPP analyses, and electrode points of ‘P5’ ‘P3’ ‘P1’ ‘PZ’ ‘P2’ ‘P4’ ‘P6’ ‘P8’ ‘PO5’ ‘PO3’ ‘POZ’ ‘PO4’ ‘PO6’ which can reflect the prominent LPP were averaged for further analysis. According to the current waveform/topographic map and previous studies referring to the typical P3 in similar tasks (e.g.…”

“…Anxious individuals can be potential beneficiaries of such training, given both explicit and implicit emotion regulation impairments confer vulnerability for anxiety disorders (Cisler & Olatunji, 2012). A large number of studies have shown that the ability to explicitly regulate emotion, especially in the form of cognitive reappraisal, is deficient in anxious individuals (Hofmann, Heering, Sawyer, & Asnaani, 2009; Pan, Wang, & Li, 2019). Habitual reappraisal as the adaptive strategies for coping with stressful events can generate long-term positive effects (Goldin, Mcrae, Ramel, & Gross, 2008) and is a critical protective factor from anxiety symptom (Hofmann et al, 2009).…”

Brain Mitochondrial Dysfunction: A Possible Mechanism Links Early Life Anxiety to Alzheimer’s Disease in Later Life

“…This part of the results reveals the unique emotions of anxious individuals and the brain networks related to working memory. In short, these results suggest an important cognitive basis for anxiety disorders and provide unique evidence for the neural mechanism of the interaction between anxiety and working memory [ 147 , 148 ].…”