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Anxious vision: Trait-like visual cortical hyperactivity in trait anxiety.
Zhaohan Wu1, Yuqi You1,2, Joshua A Brown3
1Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
|December 3, 2025
Summary
High trait anxiety is linked to hyperactivity in the early visual cortex, specifically the parvocellular pathway. This visual processing difference may stem from disrupted excitation-inhibition balance in individuals with high anxiety.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Sensory Processing
Background:
- Sensory processing differences, like hypersensitivity, are linked to emotional traits and psychiatric disorders.
- Existing theories suggest limbic and prefrontal regions modulate the sensory-emotion link, but empirical evidence is limited.
- The sensory cortex is increasingly understood to support flexible, value-based processing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between trait anxiety and early visual cortical activity.
- To determine if sensory processing alterations in anxiety are specific to certain visual pathways.
- To explore the neural mechanisms, such as excitation-inhibition balance, underlying sensory-emotion links in anxiety.
Main Methods:
- Utilized high-density electroencephalography (hd-EEG) to measure visual evoked potentials (VEPs).
- Conducted four experiments across three independent samples (N=150) with repeated assessments.
- Analyzed activity in the early visual cortex, differentiating between parvocellular and magnocellular pathways.
Main Results:
- Identified a reliable pattern of visual cortical hyperactivity in individuals with high trait anxiety.
- This hyperactivity was specific to the parvocellular visual pathway, observed as early as 46 ms in V1.
- Disrupted excitation-inhibition (E/I) ratio predicted parvocellular VEP magnitude in low, but not high, trait anxiety subjects.
Conclusions:
- Early visual processing in trait anxiety exhibits hyperactivity, particularly in the parvocellular pathway.
- This hyperactivity is a stable, trait-like characteristic, present across various stimuli and conditions.
- Altered E/I balance in the visual cortex may underlie the sensory-emotion linkage in trait anxiety.
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