title: Brain Activation Patterns Associated with the Effects of Emotional Distracters during Working Memory Maintenance in Patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
abstract: Few studies have assessed the neural mechanisms of the effects of emotion on cognition in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) patients. In this functional MRI (fMRI), we investigated the effects of emotional interference on working memory (WM) maintenance in GAD patients. Fifteen patients with GAD participated in this study. Event-related fMRI data were obtained while the participants performed a WM task (face recognition) with neutral and anxiety-provoking distracters. The GAD patients showed impaired performance in WM task during emotional distracters and showed greater activation on brain regions such as DLPFC, VLPFC, amygdala, hippocampus which are responsible for the active maintenance of goal relevant information in WM and emotional processing. Although our results are not conclusive, our finding cautiously suggests the cognitive-affective interaction in GAD patients which shown interfering effect of emotional distracters on WM maintenance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Chonbuk National University Medical School, Jeonju, Republic of Korea.; Research Institute of Clinical Medicine of Chonbuk National University-Biomedical Research Institute of Chonbuk National University Hospital, Jeonju, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jong-Il
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Research Institute for Medical Imaging, Chonnam National University Hospital, Gwangju, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Gwang-Won
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Chonnam National University Hospital, Chonnam Natioanl University Medical School, Gwangju, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Gwang-Woo
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Jeong
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Chonbuk National University Medical School, Jeonju, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Gyung Ho
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Chung
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Chonbuk National University Medical School, Jeonju, Republic of Korea.; Research Institute of Clinical Medicine of Chonbuk National University-Biomedical Research Institute of Chonbuk National University Hospital, Jeonju, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jong-Chul
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Yang
keywords: Emotional distractor; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Generalized anxiety disorder; Working memory