Neural mechanisms of encoding and maintenance of emotional faces in social anxiety disorder : An ERP study with an N-back task
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1
Université de Mons, Service de Psychologie Cognitive et Neuropsychologie, Belgium
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2
Université Catholique de Louvain, Laboratoire de Psychopathologie Expérimentale, Belgium
Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is associated with an automatic orientation of attention towards emotional stimuli. This phenomenon called attentional bias could reduce the available resources for more complex cognitive processes. In this study, we tested the impact of these attentional biases on the perceptual processing (reflected by the P100, N170 and P200) of angry faces and on the working memory abilities (reflected by the P300) in anxious individuals. To this aim, we compared 24 SAD and 25 control individuals during emotional N-Back tasks where participants were asked to remember either the identity or the emotion (angry, happy or neutral) of three different faces. ERPs potentials were recording during the tasks. Results showed enhanced P200 amplitudes in SAD group in both emotional and identity conditions, in the one and two-back tasks. However, no differences were noticed between both groups regarding to behavioural responses, despite the improved perceptual treatment recorded for all faces. Further studies are needed to clear up the dissociation between ERPs modulations and behavioural responses in SAD population.
Résumé en Français
Titre: Le fonctionnement cérébral impliqué lors de la mémorisation de visages émotionnels dans l’anxiété sociale : une étude par électro-encéphalogramme
Les patients présentant de l’anxiété sociale (AS) orienteraient automatiquement leur attention sur les éléments émotionnels de leur environnement, phénomène appelé " biais attentionnel ". Dans cette étude, nous avons testé l'impact de ce biais sur les différentes étapes du processus de mémorisation à court terme de visages “menaçants”. Pour cela, nous avons comparé les performances de sujets présentant une anxiété sociale à 25 sujets contrôles lors d'une tâche de mémoire à court terme. Les résultats ont mis en évidence un fonctionnement cérébral différent lors de la perception des visages chez les sujets AS, sans que ceci n’influance leurs performances.
Samenvatting in het Nederlands :
Titel : De betrokkenheid van het cerebraal functioneren bij sociale angststoornissen buiten het memoriseren van gezichtsuitdrukkingen: een studie via elektro encephalogram (EEG).
Patiënten met een sociale angststoornis (SA) richten hun aandacht onmiddellijk op de emotionele elementen in hun omgeving, een fenomeen dat “aandacht bias” wordt genoemd. In deze studie hebben we de impact van deze bias op de verschillende fasen van het memoriseren op korte termijn van “bedreigende” gezichtsuitdrukkingen getest. Hiervoor hebben we de prestaties van personen met een sociale angststoornis vergeleken met die van 25 controlepersonen terwijl ze een taak, memoriseren op korte termijn, uitvoerden. De resultaten toonden aan dat de hersenen van personen met SA anders functioneerden bij het herkennen van gezichtsuitdrukkingen zonder dat dit invloed had op prestaties.
Keywords:
Event-related potentials,
Social Anxiety Disorder,
working memory,
Perceptual bias,
attentional bias,
facial expressions,
emotional faces,
n-back task
Conference:
6th Belgian Brain Congress, MONS, Belgium, 8 Oct - 8 Oct, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Brain and brain diseases: between heredity and environment
Citation:
Blekic
W,
Kandana Arachchige
KG,
Wauthia
E,
Maurage
P and
Rossignol
M
(2016). Neural mechanisms of encoding and maintenance of emotional faces in social anxiety disorder : An ERP study with an N-back task.
Conference Abstract:
6th Belgian Brain Congress.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnagi.2016.03.00027
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Received:
29 Jun 2016;
Published Online:
02 Jul 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Wivine Blekic, Université de Mons, Service de Psychologie Cognitive et Neuropsychologie, Mons, Hainaut, 7000, Belgium, Wivine.blekic@umons.ac.be