Attention bias to threatening information has been reported to be one of the cognitive features of anxiety or depressed mood, and which is one of the representative predisposing factors for mood and anxiety disorders. However, the neural basis of attention bias remains unclear. Prior to the study using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we performed the behavior test and assessed the attention bias and its association with mental status, using questionnaires such as State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS), Stress Response Scale (SRS), Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) and cognitive task such as Dot-Probe task and Modified Stroop Color-Word test. Seven healthy participants were enrolled in our study. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Osaka City University, and all the participants gave written informed consent for participation. Among all participants, response latencies for probe that replaced threatening words was significantly faster than those of neutral words ( p < 0.05). Trait Anxiety and fear of uncertainty of harm avoidance (HA) of TCI was found significantly negative correlation with response latencies for threatening stimuli ( p < 0.05). As for Modified Stroop Color-Word test, we did not observe any association with response latencies. However, the correction rate of response inhibition trials tended to have negative correlation with fatigability of HA of TCI ( p < 0.10). These results showed that attention bias was found in those who had trait anxiety and fear of uncertainty. In addition, those who were vulnerable to harm and were easy fatigability suggested to have the association with impaired response inhibition component of executive function. Our findings would contribute to further understanding of the neural basis of attention bias in future study.

This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (KAKENHI:25750352) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) of Japan.