Mechanisms of Attentional Bias in Psychopathology

描述(申请人提供)：本项目将继续研究在精神病理学中涉及认知功能障碍的心理和神经机制的相互作用，强调情绪对焦虑和抑郁患者注意处理的影响。焦虑和抑郁的特点是认知偏差导致功能障碍。焦虑与对威胁性刺激的注意偏向密切相关。在抑郁症中，外显记忆、执行功能和视觉空间技能方面的缺陷已被描述。注意力、记忆力和判断力方面的偏差也被记录在案。尽管情感障碍对认知的影响已经得到了充分的证明，但人们对情绪对涉及认知的特定大脑区域的影响知之甚少。虽然我们和其他人已经描述了许多关于大脑中情绪和认知相互作用的理论可能性，但缺乏数据使这些假设成为推测。目前的项目汇集了使用不同方法(行为表现、EEG/ERPs、fMRI)研究大脑功能的科学家，试图同时检查涉及注意力和情绪的大脑结构。该项目由两个发展良好且互补的模型指导：一个是由Heller、Miller及其同事广泛研究的精神病理学中基于临床的神经心理学情绪模型，另一个是由Banich、Webb及其同事开发的标准注意力模型。这些模型的整合使我们能够产生关于焦虑和抑郁的区域大脑活动模式及其在注意力处理中的作用的具体假设。随着非常有希望的结果，我们已经开始比较经典颜色词Stroop任务中的表现和区域大脑活动指标与情绪Stroop任务中的相同变量，这是一种在最近的焦虑研究中受到极大关注的范式。在情绪Stroop中，个体忽略威胁词的内容，而注意并识别出现这些词的墨水颜色。这些范例在该项目的初始资助期得到了广泛的试验，在下一个项目期将用于DSM-IV障碍的临床样本。在Stroop的这两个版本中，血流动力学和电生理方法的拟议融合将使我们能够测试关于涉及情绪和注意力的神经网络在一系列情绪和精神病理学中相互作用的假设。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project will continue to examine the interaction of psychological and neural mechanisms involved in cognitive dysfunction in psychopathology, emphasizing the impact of emotion on attentional processing in anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression are characterized by cognitive biases leading to functional impairments. Anxiety has been strongly associated with an attentional bias to threatening stimuli. In depression, deficits have been described for explicit memory, executive functions, and visuospatial skills. Biases in attention, memory, and judgment have also been documented. Despite these well-documented effects of affective disorder on cognition, much less is known about the effects of emotion on the specific brain regions involved in cognition. Although we and others have described a number of theoretical possibilities regarding the interaction of emotion and cognition in the brain, lack of data renders these hypotheses speculative. The present project brings together scientists investigating brain function using different methods (behavioral performance, EEG/ERPs, fMRI) in an effort to examine concurrently the brain structures involved in attention and emotion. The project is guided by two well developed and complementary models: a clinically-based neuropsychological model of emotion in psychopathology extensively investigated by Heller, Miller, and colleagues, and a normative model of attention developed by Banich, Webb, and colleagues. The integration of these models allows us to generate specific hypotheses about patterns of regional brain activity in anxiety and depression and their role in attentional processing. With very promising results, we have begun comparing performance and regional brain activity measures during the classic color-word Stroop task to the same variables during an emotional Stroop task, a paradigm that has received much attention in recent anxiety research. In the emotional Stroop, individuals ignore the content of threatening words while attending to and identifying the ink color in which the words appear. These paradigms have been extensively piloted in the initial funding period of this project and in the next project period will be employed with clinical samples with DSM-IV disorders. The proposed convergence of hemodynamic and electrophysiological methods across these two versions of the Stroop will enable us to test hypotheses about the interaction of neural networks involved in emotion and attention across a range of mood and psychopathology.