Emotional vision and anxiety: Behavioral and meg data
Résumé
Emotional processing is known to be modulated by several psychopathological dimensions. In particular, anxious behavior is associated with an attentional bias toward emotional information
often characterized by contradictory manifestations at neural and behavioral levels. In healthy participants, the emotional visual stimuli have been shown to capture differently the attentional
resources when presented in central (CV) or in peripheral vision (PV). Hence, it seems interesting to use the model of CV vs PV presentation in order to explore the impact of emotional stimulations in anxious individuals as compared to healthy controls. The aim
of this presentation was to analyze the magnetoencephalography (MEG) and behavioral data illustrating the impact of emotional pictures presented in CV (0) vs PV (-12and +12), in healthy controls, in sub-clinical anxious individuals, and in patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Main results revealed that 1/emotional information presented at peripheral eccentricities grabs attentional resources needed for the performance in the center of the
visual field, 2/ state-anxiety modulates the CV impact of emotional saliency occurring in PV, 3/ patients with GAD showed greater efficiency in emotional condition than HC. In brief, patients with GAD exacerbate the processing of emotional information appearing in the CV and PV. The high level of alertness for emotional cues in PV could help to understand the causation and maintenance of anxiety disorders.