Relationship between trait anxiety, prefrontal cortex, and attention bias to angry faces in children and adolescents

Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a visual-probe task that assesses attention to threat, we investigated the cognitive and neurophysiological correlates of trait anxiety in youth. During fMRI acquisition, 16 healthy children and adolescents viewed angry-neutral face pairs and responded to a probe that was on the same (angry-congruent) or opposite (angry-incongruent) side as the angry face. Attention bias scores were calculated by subtracting participants' mean reaction time for angry-congruent trials from angry-incongruent trials. Trait anxiety was positively associated with attention bias towards angry faces. Neurophysiologically, trait anxiety was positively associated with right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation on a contrast of trials that reflect the attention bias for angry faces (i.e. angry-incongruent versus angry-congruent trials). Trait anxiety was also positively associated with right ventrolateral PFC activation on trials with face stimuli (vesus baseline), irrespective of their emotional content. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.