Key result
During psychological stress, medial lateral PFC responses link to anxiety while ventrolateral responses track performance.
Why the study?
The activation characteristics of lateral prefrontal subregions and their relationship with anxiety and cognitive performance under maintained psychological stress remain unknown.
Observational
Different subregions of the prefrontal cortex play disparate roles in anxiety and cognitive performance under maintained psychological stress.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Medial lateral PFC hemodynamics associate with anxiety and ventrolateral with performance under stress; leaves open subregional specificity for everyday anxiety monitoring.
Despite increasing interest in anxiety and psychological stress in daily life, little is known about neural correlates that underlie maintained psychological stress and their relationship with anxiety. In particular, the activation characteristics of lateral prefrontal subregions and their relationship with anxiety and cognitive performance under maintained psychological stress remain unknown. This study used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), a noninvasive and "real-world" functional neuroimaging method, to investigate the hemodynamic responses in wide areas of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the influence of anxiety under conditions of maintained stress induced by a continuous arithmetic task (2 sets, 15 min each) performed in a natural sitting posture. Although anxiety and performance are not directly correlated, the hemodynamic response in the medial portion of the lateral PFC (dorsolateral and frontopolar PFC) was significantly associated with anxiety, while hemodynamic responses in the ventrolateral PFC were associated with performance. Additionally, in the same medial region of the lateral PFC, trait and state anxieties were related to changes in deoxy- and oxy-hemoglobin concentrations, respectively. This NIRS finding suggests disparate roles for prefrontal subregions in anxiety and performance under psychological stress and may lead to a better understanding of neural correlates for anxiety in everyday life.
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Takizawa et al. (2013) conducted an observational in Psychological stress. Continuous arithmetic task was evaluated on Hemodynamic responses in the prefrontal cortex and their association with anxiety and cognitive performance. Under maintained psychological stress, hemodynamic responses in the medial lateral prefrontal cortex were associated with anxiety, while ventrolateral responses were associated with performance.
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