Electrophysiological correlates of social anxiety modulating the effect of emotion on cognitive control

Ability to focus attentional resources on a task is a necessary component of healthy cognitive regulation, which is necessary for normal emotional and cognitive processes, while avoiding distractions that aren’t related to the task at hand. However, anxiety may impair the inhibitory and transfer functions of attention. Therefore, in order to explore the modulation of social anxiety on the effect of emotion on cognitive control, individuals with high social anxiety (HSA) and low social anxiety (LSA) completed the emotional Stroop task with the neutral stimuli presented first, followed by the social threat stimuli. The HSA participants exhibited a slower response to threats than neutral words, whereas there was no emotional effect for the LSA participants. Event-Related Potential (ERP) data revealed that N2 was more negative elicited by neutral words than threat ones in the LSA, but not significant in HSA. Time–Frequency Representation (TFR) data showed enhanced theta synchronization elicited by neutral words than threat words in the LSA only. These findings provided new electrophysiological correlates for social anxiety modulating the effect of emotion on cognitive control.