Schedule of Events | Symposia

Gray matter volume correlates of Visual-spatial Attention Gradient in Trait Anxiety

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Mrinmoy CHAKRABARTY^1,2 (mrinmoy@iiitd.ac.in), Suhail Rafiq Mir^1,2, Varsha Singh²; ¹Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIITD), India, ²Centre for Design and New Media, IIITD, India, ³Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India

Flexible allocation of visual attention to different spatial loci is crucial for optimizing visually guided cognition. Failure to adaptively redistribute spatial attention may compromise the attentional field. This is relevant in anxious individuals, known to have biases of visual attention. We used an affect-primed, visual-spatial attention task with structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) in healthy young adults with varying degrees of trait anxiety (n = 60; 23 females; age [mean ± s.d.] = 22.8 ± 3.8 years). Using a behavioural task and sMRI, we explored if a) Fear and Neutral affect from image primes differed relative to No affect in modulating the distribution of visual-spatial attention; b) an association existed between the gray matter volume (GMV) of any region(s) of the whole brain and a measure of the spatial distribution of visual attention by individual valences of affect and overall. We calculated the spatial gradient of visual attention (metric for tunnel vision) using measures of attentional efficiency at two spatial locations. There was no effect of emotional valences on attentional distribution but the average gradient (across emotional valences), correlated negatively with the GMV of right cerebellum lobule VI. Further, this correlation within bilateral cerebellar lobule VI was moderated by inter-individual differences of trait anxiety, that conspicuously varied between females and males. Summarily, individuals with lesser GMV of cerebellar lobule VI manifested greater individual severity of tunnel vision, differing by trait anxiety and gender. The results suggest a non-classical role of cerebellar lobule VI in tuning fine-grained visual-spatial attention in anxiety.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Spatial