Neural response associated with hypervigilance processes in fibromyalgic patients F. Mercado, J.L. Gonzalez-Gutierrez, P. Barjola, M. Fernandez-Sanchez, C. Penacoba, A. Lopez-Lopez, L. Velasco-Furlong University Rey Juan Carlos, Department of Psychology, Madrid, Spain Fibromyalgia (FM) is understood as a chronic pain syndrome that has been characterized by an altered cortical processing of nociceptive stimulation. Furthermore, several studies have indicated that these patients show a generalized hypervigilance which could be reflected by an enhanced attention towards irrelevant events (often goes beyond the pain-related stimuli) to the ongoing task performance. This abnormal condition could be acting as a strong mechanism to maintain or even strengthen this chronic pain syndrome. However, little is known about neural correlates related to the interference of emotional distracters during the execution of an ongoing cognitive activity in fibromyalgia. To test these aspects, event-related potentials were recorded from fifty women, twenty-five patients with FM and 25 healthy participants. Our hypothesis is that automatic attentional responses of FM patients will be strongly modulated by affective content of stimuli while they perform in an emotional stroop task as compared with those included in the control group. Four types of stimuli (emotional words: arousing-negative [A-], arousing-positive [A+], neutral [N] and symptoms of fibromyalgia [SF]) were presented in four different colours (red, blue, green and yellow). All stimuli were equalled in mean length of syllable and frequency of use. Mean amplitude values were computed within the time window comprised between 100– 170 ms post-stimulus (N1 component peaking around 140 ms). N1 mean amplitudes obtained at four posterior locations (PO5, PO7, O1 and Oz) were submitted to analyses of variance. A significant attentional modulation in response to emotional words was reflected by N1 amplitude (p b 0.01). Specifically, a stimuli by channel by group interaction produced significant effects. Post-hoc analyses (Tukey; alpha = .05) revealed that N1 amplitudes to SF, A- and A+ were higher in fibromyalgic group than those corresponding to control group at lateral posterior electrodes (PO7, PO5 and O1). These results suggest the existence of a generalized hypervigilance pattern in the fibromyalgic group that can be observed during early and relatively automatic attentional phases (around 140 ms after stimulus onset). In this sense, selective responses of ‘attentional capture’ seem to be modulated by the affective content of task irrelevant stimuli. This effect may generate in these patients an increasing difficulty to set in motion auto-regulation processes. Although further research need to be done, cognitive therapies aimed at correcting automatic distorted processes typical in fibromyalgia, could be derived from present findings. +This study was supported by the grant URJC-CM-2006-CSH-0608 from the URJC/CAM of Spain. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2008.05.185 Neural substrates of the emotional negativity bias as revealed by haemodynamic data L. Carretie a , M. Rios b , M. Tapia a , J. Albert a , S. Lopez-Martin a , J. Alvarez-Linera c a Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain b Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, Spain c Hospital Ruber Internacional, Spain Extensive recent research suggests that, at least in the initial phases of emotional reaction, negative events have preferential access to processing resources. This phenomenon, favoured by evolution and often known as the ‘negativity bias’, was explored through functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) while eighteen healthy volunteers attended to emotional pictures. Our main purpose was to explore whether and how the negativity bias is related to the three main phases of emotional processing: input, evaluation and output. A novel combination of four methodological conditions advisable for the reliable study of the negativity bias was employed: i) positive pictures were presented along with negative and neutral stimuli to better discriminate valence versus arousal effects, ii) subjects were requested to perform an indirect task (i.e., orthogonal to the focus of the study), in order to avoid cognitive interference, iii) motor execution was required to facilitate output neural processes, and iv) non-facial stimuli, not processed in specialized subcortical and cortical modules as faces are, were employed with the aim of providing more generalizability of results on the negativity bias. Analyses showed maximal activations in response to negative stimuli at input systems – visual cortex –, evaluative systems – amygdala and ventral prefrontal cortex – and, interestingly, at output systems — caudate. Positive stimuli did not produce enhanced activation over negative stimuli at any cerebral area. These results are discussed in an integrated fashion, with the suggestion of a multilevel nature of the negativity bias. Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Comunidad de Madrid/Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (CCG07-UAM/SAL-1773) and by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia of Spain (SEJ2005-08461-C02-01/PSIC). doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2008.05.186 Modeling comorbidity of depression and anxiety in rats M. Chkhetiani I. Beritashvili Istitute of physiology, Department of Neurobiology, Tbilisi, Georgia One of the pressing problems of current medicine is unfavorable shifts of the human psychic state. Anxiety disorder and depression belong in these shifts. In its turn, there are two types of depression: hereditary (endogenous) and acquired (exogenous or reactive); the latter being elicited by various exogenous stressogenic stimulants. The medicamentous treatment of these two types of depression is equally efficient. In other words, these disorders may have similar central mechanisms. The bulk of clinical reference data show that in the depressive patients the anxiety disorders are often observed as well. Besides, prolonged anxiety experience can also transit into depression. Therefore, it may be suggested that anxiety and depression are closely linked phenomena, although according to the current data the neurochemical mechanisms of these pathologies are different. The goal of our investigation was determining an interrelation between anxiety and depression – either endogenous or exogenous – in the laboratory rats. In addition we endeavored to study a possible role of the pivotal structure of the septo-hippocampal system (SHS) – medial septal nucleus (MS) – in depressive state. This approach was triggered by suggestion (Gray J.A., 2000) that the SHS has a behavior inhibition property. Besides, according to a vast number of publications, this system exerts a significant influence on anxiety. In order to achieve the above goals, the following experimental models have been implemented: the Porsolt's Forced Swim Test, by which the animals inclined to depressive behavior were assigned against those not manifesting depressive behavior; the Learned Helplessness Test and bilateral lesion in the olfactory bulbs were made in order to exogenously induce depression in the animals not inclined to this type of behavior. Experiments have shown that in the animals with inborn depressive pattern of behavior, depression and anxiety do not coincide, while in the animals with exogenously elicited depression, elevation of the anxious behavior does occur. Electrolytic lesion of the MS improved both inborn and acquired depressive state; the depression-induced anxiety decreased as well. Facilitation of an overall behavior did occur too. The above observations allow suggesting that in the intact animals depression and anxiety do not overlap necessarily. It could be thus claimed that their mechanisms must be different. In development of depressive behavior certain role should be played by the SHS, which along with the other functions, e.g. learning and memory, also participates in emotional sphere of the animals. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2008.05.187 Selective attention to emotional visual stimuli in ADHD children: Preliminary electrophysiological data S. Lopez Martin a , J. Albert a , A. Fernandez Jaen b , M. Tapia a , L. Carretie a a Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain b Hospital La Zarzuela de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Scientific evidence accumulated in last years on non-clinical population has highlighted the strong interdependence between the neural processes associated with emotion and those related to attention. However, research regarding attentional dysfunctions in children with Attention Deficit Hyper- activity Disorder (ADHD) has not taken into account this interdependence, since only non-emotional stimuli (i.e., geometric shapes, letters or numbers) have been employed up to date. The main objective of this experiment was to study how selective attention is modulated by emotional stimuli in ADHD children. To 260 Posters session 2 / International Journal of Psychophysiology 69 (2008) 242–275