中華心理衛生協會

 Purpose: Patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) may show cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities, such as impaired attention control, heightened attentional bias toward threat-related stimuli, and emotional dysregulation. Reduced autonomic activity is considered a physiological vulnerability factor for individuals with high trait anxiety because it increases the likelihood of developing anxiety disorders. When the prefrontal cortex disinhibits its inhibitory control, it affects individual adaptability, leading to attentive, affective and autonomic dysfunction. Clinically, as Heart rate variability (HRV) reflects the functions of prefrontal cortex, it can serve as a biomarker for top-down self-regulation. We used HRV to investigate whether individuals with subclinical GAD and those with high trait anxiety have similar performance in attention, emotional regulation, and autonomic nervous system regulation. Methods: We recruited 20 people each for the subclinical GAD group, high trait anxiety group, and no-anxiety group. The overall sample had a mean age of 22.03 years (75% female). All participants filled out a series of self-report scales before they were connected to an electrocardiogram (ECG). After establishing a baseline ECG, the participants received a worry-inducing task, an attention network task, and the emotional Stroop task. Next, they were led into emotional relaxation. Results: We identified 3 main results: 1) The subclinical GAD group and the high trait anxiety group reported higher levels of emotional regulation difficulty and showed lower attentional control ability compared to the no-anxiety group. 2) The subclinical GAD group and the high trait anxiety group also had significantly lower values in the overall HRV indicators than did the no-anxiety group, including standard deviation of normal-to-normal intervals, total power, high frequency power, and low frequency power. 3) No significant differences were observed among the three groups regarding their performance in the attention network and emotional Stroop tasks. Conclusions: The analysis verified that individuals with GAD and those with high trait anxiety both exhibit weak attentional control, difficulty in emotional regulation, and lower autonomic nervous system activity. These findings support the basic assumptions of the neurovisceral integration model. Further research is needed with careful control of participants' characteristics, including matching the clinical population in age, gender ratios, depression levels, and health conditions. Additionally, since attentional control deficits in anxious individuals may only occur when processing emotional stimuli, it is necessary to further evaluate the attention network function of these groups in response to emotionally stimulating words.