Trait anxiety and involuntary processing of facial emotions

MEG Evidence for Dynamic Amygdala Modulations by Gaze and Facial Emotions

“…This is in line with the hypervigilance hypothesis that postulates an impact of anxiety on the early stage of stimulus processing. It is also consistent with previous EEG and MEG studies that have reported an influence of anxiety at several stages of face processing, both in early (∼100 ms) and late (>200 ms) time-ranges [83]–[94]. Our study expands these prior reports by providing for the first time direct evidence for an early (∼130 ms) influence of anxiety level on the amygdala sources of magnetic activity in response to faces.…”

Hypervigilance‐avoidance in children with anxiety disorders: magnetoencephalographic evidence

“…Instead, this effect was correlated with trait anxiety, indicating that the more trait anxious the children were, the more priority the threat cues gained in the visual stream in an early perceptive stage, and the less priority the threat cues were given in a later, more cognitive stage of processing. This is consistent with studies showing enhanced early neurophysiological responses to threat in anxious adults (Adenauer et al., ; Walentowska & Wronka, ; Weinberg & Hajcak, ) and children (Hogan et al., ) and reduced late threat responses in adults with AD (Adenauer et al., ; Weinberg & Hajcak, ). These findings can be interpreted as abnormal allocation of visual attention to threat cues in children with AD.…”

“…To complement such hemodynamic imaging studies, electro‐ and magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG), with their temporal resolution in the millisecond range, seem to be appropriate for the task of differentiating the effects of early hypervigilance and later avoidance. Indeed, the hypervigilance‐avoidance hypothesis is supported by event‐related potential (ERP) studies showing relatively enhanced amplitudes in early ERPs (around 100 ms)followed by relatively reduced amplitudes in late ERPs (around 300 ms) in response to threat in participants with high trait anxiety (Walentowska & Wronka, ), post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Adenauer et al., ), and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; Weinberg & Hajcak, ). Although respective studies are scarce, evidence for a facilitated initial orienting toward threat also comes from ERP studies in anxious children.…”

Twarze i ich percepcja – kilka słów o tym, jak przetwarzamy ekspresję emocjonalną ludzkich twarzy, z uwzględnieniem roli wybranych cech osobowości w tym procesie

“…Z pewną dozą ostrożności można założyć, że osoby z podwyższonym poziomem lęku wykazują tendencję do interpretowania stanów emocjonalnych innych osób w tendencyjny sposób i będą przychylać się do rozpoznawania u nich negatywnych stanów emocjonalnych (Walentowska, Wronka 2012;Feng, DeMarco, Haroon, Rilling 2015). Osoby z podwyższonym poziomem lęku będą rozpozna-wać niejednoznaczne ekspresje emocjonalne -np.…”