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 = 44), participants made significantly more extra-dimensional shift errors on the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) Intra-Extra Dimensional Set Shift task under CO2 inhalation compared with 'normal' air. Participants also had slower latencies when responding to positive words and made significantly more omission errors for negative words on the CANTAB Affective Go/No-go task. In Experiment 2 (n = 28), participants made significantly more total errors and had poorer heuristic search strategy on the CANTAB Spatial Working Memory task. In both experiments, CO2 inhalation significantly increased negative affect; state anxiety and fear; symptoms of panic; and systolic blood pressure/heart rate. Overall, CO2 inhalation produced robust anxiogenic effects and impaired fronto-executive functions of cognitive flexibility and working memory. Effects on emotional processing suggested a mood-congruent slowing in processing speed in the absence of a negative attentional bias. State-dependent effects of anxiety on cognitive-emotional interactions in the prefrontal cortex warrant further investigation.

中文翻译：

---

吸入二氧化碳引起的急性焦虑和自主唤醒会损害健康人的前额叶执行功能。

急性焦虑会影响认知能力。在健康的人体内吸入富含二氧化碳（CO2）的空气可提供一种新型的广泛性焦虑实验模型，但以前尚未用于评估认知能力。在一项单盲，安慰剂对照，随机，交叉，受试者内部研究中，我们使用7.5％的CO2吸入在健康志愿者的神经心理学任务（认知灵活性，情绪加工和空间工作记忆）中诱导急性焦虑和自主唤醒。在实验1（n = 44）中，与“正常”空气相比，参与者在接受CO2吸入的剑桥神经心理测试自动电池（CANTAB）的超尺寸设定换档任务上犯了更大的尺寸外换档误差。参加者在回答肯定词时的等待时间也较慢，并且在CANTAB情感“通过/不通过”任务中对否定词的遗漏错误明显增加。在实验2（n = 28）中，参与者对CANTAB空间工作记忆任务的总错误率明显更高，启发式搜索策略也较差。在两个实验中，吸入CO2均显着增加了负面影响。表现出焦虑和恐惧；惊恐症状; 和收缩压/心率。总体而言，吸入二氧化碳会产生强大的焦虑作用，并损害认知灵活性和工作记忆的额叶执行功能。对情绪加工的影响表明在没有负面注意偏见的情况下，与情绪一致的加工速度会降低。