Neuronal and Behavioral Correlates of Health Anxiety: Results of an Illness-Related Emotional Stroop Task
Neuronal and Behavioral Correlates of Health Anxiety: Results of an Illness-Related Emotional Stroop Task
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DOI：
10.1159/000345545
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发表时间：
2013-01
影响因子：
3.2
通讯作者：
M. Witthöft;D. Mier;J. Ofer;T. Müller;F. Rist;P. Kirsch;J. Bailer;C. Diener
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
M. Witthöft;D. Mier;J. Ofer;T. Müller;F. Rist;P. Kirsch;J. Bailer;C. Diener
背景：健康焦虑(HA)被定义为对患有严重疾病的客观上毫无根据的恐惧或信念。对疾病相关信息的主要注意分配被认为是HA发展和维持的中心过程，但对这种注意偏差的神经元相关性知之甚少。方法：采用包含躯体症状、疾病和中性词语的情绪Stroop任务，在功能磁共振成像过程中，对高HA和低HA的健康受试者进行情绪干预。结果：HA+受试者对症状词语颜色的反应时延长，嘴侧前扣带回(RACC)激活降低。情绪干预对整个群体行为水平的影响与rACC活性呈负相关。在威胁性疾病词的加工过程中，不同组别没有差异。结论：亚临床HA患者对躯体症状词已有较强的注意分配。这种注意偏差似乎与rACC的活动不足有关，后者阻碍了有效的情绪干预减少，而导致了刺激内容的反思性加工。
Background: Health anxiety (HA) is defined as the objectively unfounded fear or conviction of suffering from a severe illness. Predominant attention allocation to illness-related information is regarded as a central process in the development and maintenance of HA, yet little is known about the neuronal correlates of this attentional bias. Methods: An emotional Stroop task with body symptom, illness, and neutral words was employed to elicit emotional interference in healthy participants with high (HA+, n = 12) and low (HA–, n = 12) HA during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results: Prolonged reaction times for indicating the color of symptom words and a decrease in rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) activation were seen in HA+ participants. Emotional interference effects on the behavioral level were negatively related to rACC activity over the whole group. Groups did not differ during the processing of threatening illness words. Conclusion: The results indicate stronger attention allocation toward body symptom words already in subclinical HA. This attentional bias appears to be linked to hypoactivity of the rACC which impedes effective emotional interference reduction, leading instead to a ruminative processing of the stimulus content.