Acute anxiety and autonomic arousal induced by CO2 inhalation impairs prefrontal executive functions in healthy humans

Savulich, George; Hezemans, Frank H; van Ghesel Grothe, Sophia; Dafflon, Jessica; Schulten, Norah; Brühl, Annette B; Sahakian, Barbara J; Robbins, Trevor W

doi:10.1038/s41398-019-0634-z

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Savulich, G., Hezemans, F. H., van Ghesel Grothe, S., Dafflon, J., Schulten, N., Brühl, A. B., Sahakian, B. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2019). Acute anxiety and autonomic arousal induced by CO2 inhalation impairs prefrontal executive functions in healthy humans. Translational Psychiatry, 9, 296. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-019-0634-z

Abstract

Acute anxiety impacts cognitive performance. Inhalation of air enriched with carbon dioxide (CO2) in healthy humans provides a novel experimental model of generalised anxiety, but has not previously been used to assess cognition. We used inhalation of 7.5% CO2 to induce acute anxiety and autonomic arousal in healthy volunteers during neuropsychological tasks of cognitive flexibility, emotional processing and spatial working memory in a single-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, crossover, within-subjects study. In Experiment 1 (n =