title: Respiratory perception measured by cortical neural activations in individuals with generalized anxiety disorder.
abstract: There has been evidence for the effect of anxiety on the neural processing of respiratory sensation using the respiratory-related evoked potentials (RREP) elicited by inspiratory occlusions. This study tested the RREP elicited by inspiratory occlusions in a group of outpatients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and a group of healthy controls. We hypothesized that the RREP P3 peak would be modulated in the GAD patients. A RREP oddball paradigm of 150-ms inspiratory occlusion protocol was used in 15 GAD patients and 11 healthy adults with normal lung functions. The RREP was recorded with a 40-channel electroencephalography (EEG) system. A minimum of 100 occlusions was collected for data analysis. We found that the averaged P3 latency of the GAD patients was significantly longer than the P3 latency of the healthy controls. In addition, the GAD group showed significantly reduced P3 amplitudes compared to the control group. No group differences in latency and amplitudes were found for earlier RREP components. These results demonstrated that a delayed and reduced attention peak (P3) is present in patients with GAD. This suggests that GAD as a disease state modulates the higher order processing of respiratory perception.
authors.affiliation: Department of Occupational Therapy, College of Medicine, and Healthy Ageing Research Center, Chang Gung University, 259 Wen-Hwa 1st Road, Taoyuan 333, Taiwan. Electronic address: chanp@mail.cgu.edu.tw.
authors.forename: Pei-Ying S
authors.initials: PY
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.affiliation: Research group on Health Psychology, University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium; Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246 Hamburg, Germany. Electronic address: andreas.vonleupoldt@ppw.kuleuven.be.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: von Leupoldt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkuo, 5 Fu-Hsing Street, Kwei-Shan, Taoyuan 333, Taiwan; Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chang Gung University, 259 Wen-Hwa 1st Road, Kwei Shan, Taoyuan 333, Taiwan. Electronic address: liucy752@cgmh.org.tw.
authors.forename: Chia-Yih
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkuo, 5 Fu-Hsing Street, Kwei-Shan, Taoyuan 333, Taiwan; Department of Medicine, Chang Gung University, 259 Wen-Hwa 1st Road, Kwei Shan, Taoyuan 333, Taiwan. Electronic address: hsu3160@cgmh.org.tw.
authors.forename: Shih-Chieh
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Hsu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004417:Dyspnea / Q000503:physiopathology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D012119:Respiration
keywords: Dyspnea; Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD); Respiratory sensation; Respiratory-related evoked potential