Alterations of the attentional networks in patients with anxiety disorders

Cognitive theories of emotion try to explain how anxious people attend to the world. Despite the increase in empirical research in this field, the specific or general attentional impairments of patients with anxiety disorder is not well defined. We decided to investigate the relationship between pathological anxiety and attentional mechanisms from the broader perspective of the attentional networks. In our study, patients with anxiety disorders and control participants carried out a task to assess efficiency of three attentional networks: orienting, alerting, and executive control. The main result was that anxiety disorders are related to both reduced effectiveness of the executive control network and difficulties in disengaging attention from invalid cues, even when using emotionally neutral information. This relationship between these attentional networks and anxiety may in part explain the problems in the day-to-day functioning of these patients.

► We studied the specific attentional mechanisms that are involved in anxiety disorders.
► Anxiety disorders patients, compared to controls, showed deficits in executive control network.
► Patients had difficulties in disengaging attention from invalid cues, even using neutral information.