Associations Between the Late Positive Potential and PTSD, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms Among Trauma-Exposed Undergraduates

Poster Session A - Saturday, April 13, 2024, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Erick J. Fedorenko¹, Patrick V. Barnwell², Richard J. Contrada²; ¹Alpert Medical School of Brown University, ²Rutgers University

Trauma-exposure can contribute to maladaptive attentional processes that are associated with symptoms of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. The amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential in the EEG, reflects allocation of neural attentional resources to a stimulus. Research on the associations between the LPP and psychopathology have been mixed, and few studies tested these relationships with positive and neutral stimuli. Clarifying these relationships can allow for a better understanding of the neural underpinnings of trauma-related disorders. Participants were seventy-three trauma-exposed undergraduates (56.2% female) with a range of clinical symptoms. Self-report measures assessed recent PTSD, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. Participants viewed a series of negative, positive, and neutral images and LPP amplitude to each stimulus type indexed neural allocation of attention. Hierarchical linear modeling tested the effects of valence and symptoms on LPP amplitude, as well as associations between the LPP psychopathology. The LPP amplitude to negative images was higher than that to neutral images, b=0.699, SE=0.233, t=2.999, p=0.003; however, there were no differences between LPP amplitude to positive and neutral images, b=0.321, SE=0.233, t=1.376, p=0.169, nor negative and positive images, b=0.378, SE=0.233, t=1.622, p=0.105. Greater depressive symptoms were associated with higher LPP amplitude to neutral images, b=-0.223, t=-2.896, p=0.005, but not to negative, b=0.124, t=1.391, p=0.169, nor positive, b=0.116, t=1.342, p=0.184, images. There were no relationships with anxiety nor PTSD symptoms. Depressive symptoms might be related to diminished attention to neutral stimuli among trauma-exposed undergraduates. Further investigation of the relationship between the LPP and psychopathology is needed.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions