Influence of trait-anxiety on inhibition function: evidence from ERPs study

Patients suffering from anxiety disorder may experience a few problems in the inhibition function. Using event-related potentials, the current study investigated the differences between subjects with high versus low trait-anxiety when they tried to inhibit disturbances in novel emotional pictures in an oddball task. The results showed that P3 amplitudes evoked by negative pictures relative to neutral pictures were decreased in subjects with high as well as low anxiety. In the high-anxious group, P3 amplitudes were also decreased in the positive condition relative to the neutral condition, whereas in the low anxious group, P3 amplitudes showed no significant differences between the positive and neutral stimuli. This implies that people with high anxiety may exhibit some degree of over-inhibition in emotional processing as compared to people with low anxiety. These people tend to indiscriminately inhibit all types of disturbing emotional information.