Trait Anxiety Modulates Event-Related Potential Responses to Emotional Faces

Trait anxiety is a stable personality trait associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms that is generally assessed using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). However, as a self-report tool, the STAI has limitations, including social desirability bias. To address these limitations and investigate the neural signature of trait anxiety, this study examined event-related potentials (ERPs) during an emotional Stroop task. Eleven healthy adults completed the STAI and responded to a colored facial stimulus showing anger, disgust, or neutrality while undergoing 19-channel electroencephalography recording. The results revealed that participants with low anxiety exhibited significantly reduced (i.e., less negative) N170 amplitude and delayed latency in response to angry faces compared with neutral faces in the frontal and central regions. However, participants with high anxiety exhibited no significant difference in N170 responses between angry and neutral faces. Consequently, the difference in N170 amplitude (angry minus neutral) was significantly greater in the high-anxiety group, indicating a greater attentional bias to angry faces. Further, participants with high anxiety exhibited a reduced P200 response to angry faces relative to neutral faces in the right occipital region, resulting in significant changes in the relative P200 amplitude within the parieto-occipital regions. Notably, the relative change in P200 at channel P8 correlated with trait anxiety scores. Participants with higher anxiety demonstrated enhanced P200 responses to disgusted faces in the left parieto-occipital regions. These findings highlight the value of the ERP measures in identifying neural markers of trait anxiety and attentional biases.Clinical Relevance- The results may contribute to the development of objective measures for assessing anxiety and improving interventions for anxiety-related disorders.