title: Valence-related vigilance biases in anxiety studied through event-related potentials.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Behavioral experiments on reaction time indicate that anxious subjects' vigilance-related attention is biased towards threatening words, though direct data on cerebral activity associated to this bias are conspicuously scarce.
  
  
  METHODS
  In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 30 subjects, grouped according to their scores in trait and state anxiety questionnaires. The specific role of the arousal and valence content of the stimulation in the vigilance bias was investigated by blocking the arousal content. Stimulation with high biological significance was employed. An S1 (sound)-S2 (emotional picture) task ensured that subjects were vigilant towards positive, negative or control (neutral) images.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Only subjects presenting high state scores and high state-trait combination scores showed significantly higher amplitudes in the Early Contingent Negative Variation during vigilance towards negative stimuli. This ERP component typically appears between S1 and S2 and reflects the intensity of vigilance.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  ERP activity detects cerebral indices that confirm the presence of valence-related vigilance biases in anxiety.
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Psicologi;a, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. carretie@uam.es
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Carretié
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Mercado
authors.forename: José A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Hinojosa
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Martín-Loeches
authors.forename: María
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sotillo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis*; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004585:Electrooculography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014825:Vocabulary