Worry is associated with impaired gating of threat from working memory.

ABSTRACT: Dispositional anxiety is a well-established risk factor for the development of anxiety and other emotional disorders. These disorders are common, debilitating, and challenging to treat, pointing to the need to understand the more elementary neurocognitive mechanisms that confer elevated risk. Importantly, many of the maladaptive behaviors characteristic of anxiety, such as worry, occur when threat is absent. This raises the possibility that worry reflects difficulties gating threat-related information from working memory--a limited capacity workspace that supports the maintenance, recall, and manipulation of information--and facilitates goal-directed thoughts and actions. Here, we tested, for the first time, whether trait-like individual differences in worry, a key facet of the anxious phe

SUBMITTER: Stout DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4324005 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature