Disruptions of salience network during uncertain anticipation of conflict control in anxiety

Background: Anxiety has been characterized by disrupted processing of conflict control, while little is known about anticipatory processing of conflicts in anxiety. Anticipation is the key factor in both anxiety and cognitive control, especially under uncertain conditions. The current study therefore examined neurocomputational mechanisms of uncertain anticipation of conflict control in anxiety.Methods: Twenty-six participants with high-trait anxiety and twenty-nine low-trait anxiety participants completed a cue-flanker task with functional magnetic resonance imaging. The hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) was used to measure the cognitive computations during the task. To identify the neurocomputational mechanism of anticipatory control in anxiety, mediation analysis and dynamic causal modelling (DCM) analysis were conducted to examine the relationship between functional connectivity of brain networks and the pa-rameters of HDDM.Results: We found influences of regulatory signals from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to dorsal anterior cingulate cortex on decision threshold in low-trait anxiety (LTA), but not in high-trait anxiety (HTA), especially for the condition with uncertain cues. The results indicate deficient top-down anticipatory control of upcoming conflicts in anxious individuals. DCM and HDDM analyses revealed that lower decision threshold was associated with higher intrinsic connectivity of salience network (SN) in anxious individuals, suggesting that dysfunctional SN disrupts anticipation of conflict control under uncertainty in anxiety.Conclusions: Our results suggest hyperfunction of the SN underlies the deficient information accumulation during uncertain anticipation of upcoming conflicts in anxiety. Our findings shed new light on the mechanisms of anticipation processing and the psychopathology of anxiety.

Automated summary

This study investigates the anticipatory processing of conflicts in individuals with anxiety disorder under uncertain conditions. Results suggest that anxious individuals show deficient top-down anticipatory control of upcoming conflicts, which may be related to dysfunctional brain networks and uncertainty in anticipation of conflict control.