Neural Substrates of Decision-making in Anxiety

描述(由申请者提供)：焦虑影响人们处理刺激和选择行为的方式。高特质焦虑(HTA)受试者比正常特质焦虑(NTA)受试者更敏感地发现与威胁相关的材料。这种知觉偏差对行为选择的影响很少被研究，焦虑受试者选择行为背后的神经基础也很少被理解。对惊恐障碍患者的行为研究和对HTA受试者的研究支持了这样的假设，即焦虑增加与错误敏感性增加有关，即不希望或不正确的结果更有可能改变正在进行的反应策略。此外，在一项简单的决策任务中，HTA受试者表现出更强的风险厌恶。神经成像研究表明，嘴侧和背侧前扣带回(ACC)是冲突检测和认知或情感评估加工的关键神经底物，它接受来自边缘和非边缘结构的输入，包括杏仁核。初步研究表明，与NTA受试者相比，HTA受试者在决策过程中，其肩部和背侧ACC的激活程度更高。这一建议旨在阐明HTA受试者在决策过程中的行为特征和神经基础。我们将对斯皮尔伯格特质焦虑量表(HTA)中85%的年龄、性别、教育程度、种族、共病匹配的大学生和这份问卷(NTA)中第40-60百分位数的正常组进行实验，以检验行为和神经基础假设以及这些假设之间的关系：(1)与NTA受试者相比：HTA受试者对决策任务中的错误更敏感；HTA受试者在简单决策任务中的冒险行为减少。(2)与NTA受试者相比，HTA受试者在简单的决策任务中表现出背侧ACC的激活增加；HTA受试者在冒险决策任务中对潜在不利结果的预期时表现出更高的嘴侧ACC激活。这些实验的结果将为焦虑和焦虑症的神经认知和神经基础模型提供重要数据。此外，识别功能失调的神经认知过程和潜在的神经底物将使我们能够更好地确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.