Activation in Thalamus Predicts State and Trait Anxiety: An FMRI Perspective of Attentional Control Theory

Shilpi Modi¹, Manas K. Mandal², Prabhjot Kaur¹, Rajendra P. Tripathi¹, Subash Khushu¹

Anxiety impairs the inhibition function and hence, increased distractibility is found in anxious individuals compared with nonanxious ones. fMRI was carried out to map neural correlates for an attention task that required distracter inhibition. Individual differences in state and trait anxiety levels were regressed with individual BOLD activation patterns. Multiple regression analysis results indicate that the activation in thalamus predicted lower state anxiety and higher trait anxiety levels of subjects Results further suggest that different types of anxietystate or traitmay influence attention differently.