Threat-related attention bias is thought to contribute to the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Dot-probe studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have indicated that several early ERP components are modulated by threatening and emotional stimuli in anxious populations, suggesting enhanced allocation of attention to threat and emotion at earlier stages of processing. However, ERP components selected for examination and analysis in these studies vary widely and remain inconsistent. The present study used temporospatial principal component analysis (PCA) to systematically identify ERP components elicited to face pair cues and probes in a dot-probe task in anxious adults. Cue-locked components sensitive to emotion included an early occipital C1 component enhanced for happy versus angry face pair cues and an early parieto-occipital P1 component enhanced for happy versus angry face pair cues. Probe-locked components sensitive to congruency included a parieto-occipital P2 component enhanced for incongruent probes (probes replacing neutral faces) versus congruent probes (probes replacing emotional faces). Split-half correlations indicated that the mean value around the PCA-derived peaks were reliably measured in the ERP waveforms. These results highlight promising neurophysiological markers for attentional bias research that can be extended to designs comparing anxious and healthy comparison groups. Results from a secondary exploratory PCA analysis investigating the effects of emotional face position and analyses on behavioral reaction time data are also presented.

中文翻译：

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使用时空主成分分析对焦虑成人注意力偏差的 ERP 成分进行初步调查。

与威胁相关的注意力偏差被认为有助于焦虑症的发展和维持。使用事件相关电位 (ERP) 的点探针研究表明，在焦虑人群中，一些早期的 ERP 成分受到威胁和情绪刺激的调节，这表明在处理的早期阶段对威胁和情绪的注意力分配得到了加强。然而，在这些研究中选择用于检查和分析的 ERP 组件差异很大并且仍然不一致。本研究使用时空主成分分析 (PCA) 系统地识别 ERP 组件在焦虑成人的点探针任务中引发面对配对线索和探针。对情绪敏感的线索锁定成分包括针对快乐与愤怒面孔配对线索增强的早期枕骨 C1 成分和针对快乐与愤怒面孔配对线索增强的早期顶枕 P1 成分。对一致性敏感的探针锁定组件包括一个顶枕 P2 组件，该组件针对不一致的探针（替换中性面的探针）与全等的探针（替换情绪面的探针）进行了增强。对半相关性表明，在 ERP 波形中可靠地测量了 PCA 衍生峰周围的平均值。这些结果突出了有希望的注意力偏差研究的神经生理学标志物，可以扩展到比较焦虑和健康对照组的设计。