title: Anxiety and cognitive efficiency: differential modulation of transient and sustained neural activity during a working memory task.
abstract: According to the processing-efficiency hypothesis (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007), anxious individuals are thought to require greater activation of brain systems supporting cognitive control (e.g.,dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DLPFC) in order to maintain equivalent performance to nonanxious subjects. A recent theory of cognitive control (Braver, Gray, & Burgess, 2007) has proposed that reduced cognitive efficiency might occur as a result of changes in the temporal dynamics of DLPFC recruitment. In this study, we used a mixed blocked/ event-related fMRI design to track transient and sustained activity in DLPFC while high- and low-anxious participants performed a working memory task. The task was performed after the participants viewed videos designed to induce neutral or anxiety-related moods. After the neutral video, the high-anxious participants had reduced sustained but increased transient activation in working memory areas, in comparison with low-anxious participants. The high-anxious group also showed extensive reductions in sustained activation of "default-network" areas (possible deactivation). After the negative video,the low-anxiety group shifted their activation dynamics in cognitive control regions to resemble those of the high-anxious group. These results suggest that reduced cognitive control in anxiety might be due to a transient, rather than sustained, pattern of working memory recruitment. Supplementary information for this study may be found at www.psychonomic.org/archive.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA. cfales@artsci.wustl.edu
authors.forename: C L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Fales
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Barch
authors.forename: G C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Burgess
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schaefer
authors.forename: D S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Mennin
authors.forename: J R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Gray
authors.forename: T S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Braver
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D004526:Efficiency / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012737:Sex Factors