Gray matter volume correlates of the spatial distribution of visual attention in high trait anxiety

Abstract

Flexible allocation of attentional resources to different spatial loci is crucial to meet the demands of a dynamic environment that we navigate daily. The inability to adaptively redistribute spatial attention may lead to constricted or tunnel vision, which may compromise sampling the span of the visual field towards optimizing visually guided behaviour. This is of interest in anxious individuals, who are known to have biases in visual processing. We used a modified affect-primed, visual-spatial behavioural attention task with structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) in a sample of healthy young adults with varying degrees of trait(dispositional) anxiety (n = 60 with 23 females; age [mean ± s.d.] = 22.8 ± 3.8; trait anxiety [mean ± s.d.] = 46.52 ± 11.04). Using objective measures from the behavioural task and sMRI, we explored if a) fear and neutral affect from image primes differed relative to no affect (scrambled image prime) in modulating the distribution of visual spatial attention; b) an association existed between the gray matter volume (GMV) of any particular region(s) of the whole brain and a measure of the spatial distribution of attention by individual valences of affect and overall.