Neural Substrates of Decision-making in Anxiety

描述（由申请人提供）：焦虑影响人们如何处理刺激和选择行动。高特质焦虑（HTA）的受试者比正常特质焦虑（NTA）的受试者更敏感地检测到威胁相关的材料。这种知觉偏差对行为选择的影响很少被研究，焦虑受试者行为选择的神经基础也知之甚少。对惊恐障碍患者的行为研究和对HTA受试者的研究支持这一假设，即焦虑增加与错误敏感性增加有关，即，不希望的或不正确的结果更有可能改变正在进行的应对战略。此外，HTA受试者在简单的决策任务中表现出增加的风险厌恶。神经影像学研究表明，前扣带回（ACC）的喙侧和背侧接受来自边缘系统和非边缘系统结构（包括杏仁核）的输入，是冲突检测和认知或情感评价处理的关键神经基质。初步研究表明，相对于NTA受试者，HTA受试者在决策过程中显示出喙侧和背侧ACC的激活增加。本研究的目的在于阐明HTA受试者在决策过程中的行为特征和神经基质。将对Spielberger特质焦虑量表（HTA）上> 85百分位数的年龄、性别、教育、种族、共患病匹配的大学生和该量表（NTA）上40 - 60百分位数的规范组进行实验，以检查行为和神经基质假设以及这些假设之间的关系：（1）与NTA受试者相比：HTA受试者在决策任务中对错误的敏感性增加; HTA受试者在简单决策任务中的风险承担减少。(2)与NTA受试者相比：HTA受试者在简单的决策任务期间显示背侧ACC激活增加; HTA受试者在冒险决策任务期间预期潜在不良结果期间显示喙侧ACC激活增加。这些实验的结果将为焦虑和焦虑障碍的神经认知和神经基质模型提供重要数据。此外，识别功能失调的神经认知过程和潜在的神经基质将使我们能够更好地指定基于焦虑的中间表型。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Anxiety affects how people process stimuli and select actions. High Trait Anxious (HTA) subjects are more sensitive than Normatively Trait Anxious (NTA) subjects to detect threat-related material. The consequences of this perceptual bias for the selection of action have been little studied and the neural basis underlying the selection of action in anxious subjects is poorly understood. Behavioral studies of patients with panic disorder and studies with HTA subjects support the hypothesis that increased anxiety is associated with increased error sensitivity, i.e., an undesired or incorrect outcome is more likely to change ongoing response strategies. In addition, HTA subjects show increased risk aversion in a simple decision-making task. Neuroimaging studies have implicated rostral and dorsal anterior cingulate (ACC), which receive input from limbic and non-limbic structures including the amygdala, as critical neural substrates for conflict detection and cognitive or affective evaluative processing. Preliminary studies show that HTA subjects relative to NTA subjects show increased activation of rostral and dorsal ACC during decision-making. This proposal aims to elucidate the behavioral characteristics and neural substrates in HTA subjects during decision-making. Experiments will be conducted with age-, gender-, education-, ethnicity-, comorbidity- matched college students that are > 85 percentile on the Spielberger Trait Anxiety Inventory (HTA) and a normative group that are within the 40th- 60th percentile on this inventory (NTA) to examine a behavioral and a neural substrate hypothesis as well as the relationship between these hypotheses: (1) In comparison to NTA subjects: HTA subjects show increased sensitivity to errors in a decision-making task; HTA subjects show decreased risk-taking in a simple decision-making task. (2) In comparison to NTA subjects: HTA subjects show increased activation in dorsal ACC during a simple decision-making task; HTA subjects show increased rostral ACC activation during anticipation of a potential adverse outcome during the risk-taking decision-making task. Results from these experiments will provide important data toward a neurocognitive and neural substrate model of anxiety and anxiety disorders. In addition, identifying dysfunctional neurocognitive processes and underlying neural substrates will enable us to better specify anxiety-based intermediate phenotypes.