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Heightened sensitivity to panic-related sounds with reduced sensitivity to neutral sounds in preattentive processing
Ya Zheng1, Ruiying Li2, Han Guo2
1Department of Psychology, Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China.
Background:
Hypervigilance to panic-related stimuli is believed to play a critical role in the pathogenesis of panic disorder. The current event-related potential study explored whether this hyperresponsivity occurred in the absence of focused attention.
Methods:
Mismatch negativity (MMN) responses to panic-related vs. neutral deviants were assessed in 15 medication-free panic patients without agoraphobia and 16 healthy controls using a reverse-standard-deviant paradigm.
Results:
Panic patients relative to healthy controls exhibited an enhanced MMN in response to panic-related sounds but a reduced MMN in response to neutral sounds. Furthermore, MMN responses were delayed in panic patients compared to healthy controls, irrespective of stimulus type.
Limitation:
The sample size is relatively small.
Conclusions:
Our data provide evidence that panic disorder was associated with an increased sensitivity to panic-related changes, accompanied by a reduced sensitivity to other acoustic changes as well as a general slow-down of cognitive processing during the preattentive processing stage.
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