Hemispheric laterality and memory bias for threat in anxiety disorders

The authors examined auditory perceptual asymmetries and explicit memory biases for threat in patients with panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder relative to healthy control subjects. They did not find a greater explicit memory bias for threat in the anxiety patients. However, explicit memory biases for threat were associated with perceptual asymmetry scores; patients with a greater right-ear (left hemisphere) advantage exhibited an explicit memory bias for threat material, whereas patients with a lower right-ear advantage displayed apparent cognitive avoidance of threat material. Memory for threat words was unrelated to perceptual asymmetry in healthy control subjects. These findings suggest that neuropsychological variables may partly determine the degree to which anxiety patients process threatening stimuli.