Payne Aiden M, Schmidt Norman B, Meyer Alex, Hajcak Greg
Psychology Department, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida.
Department of Education and Counseling Psychology, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California.
Biol Psychiatry Glob Open Sci. 2024 Sep 16;5(1):100393. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsgos.2024.100393. eCollection 2025 Jan.
The error-related negativity (ERN) is a brain response evoked by mistakes in cognitive tasks that is enhanced with anxiety and can predict the subsequent onset or exacerbation of anxiety in children and adolescents. A physical disturbance to standing balance evokes a brain response called the balance N1 that resembles the ERN in scalp topography and in response to a variety of moderating factors. We recently found that the balance N1 and ERN correlate in amplitude across small samples of adults.
In the current study, we tested the effect of anxiety on the balance N1 in children (ages 9-12 years) with and without diagnosed anxiety disorders (38 children with generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder and 50 children without these disorders). We measured the balance N1 in response to sudden release of support from a forward leaning posture, the ERN in response to mistakes on a Go/NoGo task, and anxiety symptoms using child- and parent-report forms of the Screen for Child Anxiety and Related Emotional Disorders.
Both the balance N1 and the ERN were larger in the anxious group. The balance N1 was also associated with both the ERN and parent report of child anxiety symptom severity across individuals.
The higher measurement reliability of the balance N1 than the ERN and greater experimental control over errors suggest that balance paradigms may provide a more powerful method for investigating individual differences in error-related brain activity related to anxiety.
错误相关负波（ERN）是认知任务中错误引发的一种大脑反应，在焦虑状态下会增强，并且能够预测儿童和青少年随后焦虑的发作或加重。站立平衡受到的物理干扰会引发一种称为平衡N1的大脑反应，其在头皮地形图以及对多种调节因素的反应方面类似于ERN。我们最近发现，在小样本成年人中，平衡N1和ERN在幅度上具有相关性。
在本研究中，我们测试了焦虑对患有和未患有焦虑症的儿童（9至12岁）平衡N1的影响（38名患有广泛性焦虑、社交焦虑和/或强迫症的儿童以及50名未患这些疾病的儿童）。我们测量了前倾姿势下支撑突然释放时的平衡N1、对Go/NoGo任务中错误的ERN，以及使用儿童和家长报告形式的儿童焦虑及相关情绪障碍筛查量表来评估焦虑症状。
焦虑组的平衡N1和ERN都更大。个体的平衡N1还与ERN以及家长报告的儿童焦虑症状严重程度相关。
平衡N1比ERN具有更高的测量可靠性，并且对错误有更好的实验控制，这表明平衡范式可能为研究与焦虑相关的错误相关脑活动的个体差异提供一种更有效的方法。
