Neural correlates of an attentional bias to health-threatening stimuli in individuals with pathological health anxiety.

Background: An attentional bias to health-threat stimuli is assumed to represent the primary pathogenetic factor for the development and maintenance of pathological health anxiety (PHA; formerly termed "hypochondriasis"). However, little is known about the neural basis of this attentional bias in individuals with PHA.

Methods: A group of patients with PHA, a group of depressed patients and a healthy control group completed an emotional Stroop task with health-threat (body symptom and illness) words and neutral control words while undergoing functional MRI.

Cough Is Dangerous: Neural Correlates of Implicit Body Symptoms Associations.

The negative interpretation of body sensations (e.g., as sign of a severe illness) is a crucial cognitive process in pathological health anxiety (HA).

Neuronal and behavioral correlates of health anxiety: results of an illness-related emotional Stroop task.

Background: Health anxiety (HA) is defined as the objectively unfounded fear or conviction of suffering from a severe illness. Predominant attention allocation to illness-related information is regarded as a central process in the development and maintenance of HA, yet little is known about the neuronal correlates of this attentional bias.

Methods: An emotional Stroop task with body symptom, illness, and neutral words was employed to elicit emotional interference in healthy participants with high (HA+, n = 12) and low (HA-, n = 12) HA during functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Covariation bias for ambiguous social stimuli in generalized social phobia.

The authors investigated whether the negative interpretation bias in generalized social phobia (GSP) reflects and is maintained by illusory correlations. Participants were exposed to descriptions of ambiguous social events, situations involving fear-relevant animals and nature scenes that were randomly paired with negative, positive, or neutral emotional facial expressions. Prior to the experiment, the GSP participants overestimated the contingency social situations-negative outcome, whereas the controls judged negative outcomes as least likely.