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Dal Bò E, Cecchetto C, Callara AL, Greco A, Mura F, Vanello N, Di Francesco F, Scilingo EP, Gentili C. Emotion perception through the nose: how olfactory emotional cues modulate the perception of neutral facial expressions in affective disorders. Transl Psychiatry 2024; 14:342. [PMID: 39181892 PMCID: PMC11344772 DOI: 10.1038/s41398-024-03038-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2023] [Revised: 07/17/2024] [Accepted: 07/24/2024] [Indexed: 08/27/2024] Open
Abstract
Humans can decode emotional states from the body odors of the conspecifics and this type of emotional communication is particularly relevant in conditions in which social interactions are impaired, as in depression and social anxiety. The present study aimed to explore how body odors collected in happiness and fearful conditions modulate the subjective ratings, the psychophysiological response and the neural processing of neutral faces in individuals with depressive symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and healthy controls (N = 22 per group). To this aim, electrocardiogram (ECG) and HD-EEG were recorded continuously. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) was extracted from the ECG as a measure of vagal tone, event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related spectral perturbations (ERPSs) were extracted from the EEG. The results revealed that the HRV increased during the fear and happiness body odors conditions compared to clean air, but no group differences emerged. For ERPs data, repeated measure ANOVA did not show any significant effects. However, the ERPSs analyses revealed a late increase in delta power and a reduced beta power both at an early and a late stage of stimulus processing in response to the neutral faces presented with the emotional body odors, regardless of the presence of depressive or social anxiety symptoms. The current research offers new insights, demonstrating that emotional chemosignals serve as potent environmental cues. This represents a substantial advancement in comprehending the impact of emotional chemosignals in both individuals with and without affective disorders.
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Grants
- 824153 EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020)
- 824153 EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020)
- 824153 EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020)
- 824153 EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020)
- 824153 EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020)
- 824153 EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020)
- 824153 EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020)
- DM 11/05/2017 n. 262 Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (Ministry of Education, University and Research)
- European Union - Next Generation EU, in the context of The National Recovery and Resilience Plan, Investment 1.5 Ecosystems of Innovation, Project Tuscany Health Ecosystem (THE), Spoke 3 "Advanced technologies, methods, materials and heath analytics " CUP: I53C22000780001
- PNRR - M4C2 - Investimento 1.3, Partenariato Esteso PE00000013 - “FAIR - Future Artificial Intelligence Research” - Spoke 1 “Human-centered AI”, funded by the European Commission under the NextGeneration EU programme.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elisa Dal Bò
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy.
| | - Cinzia Cecchetto
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
| | - Alejandro Luis Callara
- Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
- Research Center "E. Piaggio", University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Alberto Greco
- Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
- Research Center "E. Piaggio", University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Francesca Mura
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
| | - Nicola Vanello
- Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
- Research Center "E. Piaggio", University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Fabio Di Francesco
- Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Enzo Pasquale Scilingo
- Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
- Research Center "E. Piaggio", University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Claudio Gentili
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
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Righi S, Benedetti V, Giganti F, Turano MT, Raduazzo G, Viggiano MP. Anxiety is not the right choice! Individual differences in trait anxiety modulate biases in pseudoneglect. Front Hum Neurosci 2023; 17:1201898. [PMID: 37600557 PMCID: PMC10434218 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1201898] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2023] [Accepted: 07/10/2023] [Indexed: 08/22/2023] Open
Abstract
Pseudoneglect, the tendency to display a leftward perceptual bias, is consistently observed in line bisection tasks. Some studies have shown that pseudoneglect is sensitive to emotions. This emotion-related modulation is likely related to valence-dependent hemispheric lateralization, although the results do not converge. A possible explanation for these inconsistencies could be individual differences in emotional tone. Considering that negative and positive emotions produce different basic activations of the two hemispheres, emotional characteristics of the subjects, such as trait anxiety, could in fact modulate the pseudoneglect phenomenon. To verify this, high- and low-anxiety participants were asked to centrally bisect horizontal lines delimited by neutral or emotional (happy and sad) faces. In line with previous studies, results here showed a decrease in the leftward bisection error in the presence of happy faces, indicating a greater involvement of the left hemisphere in processing positive emotional stimuli. In addition, trait anxiety influenced the magnitude of the visual bias. High-anxiety subjects, compared to low-anxiety subjects, showed a general bias in visual attention toward the left space as a function of emotional valence. Results are discussed within the framework of valence-dependent hemispheric specialization and the relative degree of activation. In sum, our data highlight the relevance of considering emotional individual differences in studying the pseudoneglect phenomenon.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefania Righi
- Department of Neurofarba, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
| | - Viola Benedetti
- Department of Neurofarba, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
| | - Fiorenza Giganti
- Department of Neurofarba, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
| | | | - Greta Raduazzo
- Department of Neurofarba, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
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Gan S, Li W. Aberrant neural correlates of multisensory processing of audiovisual social cues related to social anxiety: An electrophysiological study. Front Psychiatry 2023; 14:1020812. [PMID: 36761870 PMCID: PMC9902659 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1020812] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2022] [Accepted: 01/03/2023] [Indexed: 01/26/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by abnormal fear to social cues. Although unisensory processing to social stimuli associated with social anxiety (SA) has been well described, how multisensory processing relates to SA is still open to clarification. Using electroencephalography (EEG) measurement, we investigated the neural correlates of multisensory processing and related temporal dynamics in social anxiety disorder (SAD). METHODS Twenty-five SAD participants and 23 healthy control (HC) participants were presented with angry and neutral faces, voices and their combinations with congruent emotions and they completed an emotional categorization task. RESULTS We found that face-voice combinations facilitated auditory processing in multiple stages indicated by the acceleration of auditory N1 latency, attenuation of auditory N1 and P250 amplitudes, and decrease of theta power. In addition, bimodal inputs elicited cross-modal integrative activity which is indicated by the enhancement of visual P1, N170, and P3/LPP amplitudes and superadditive response of P1 and P3/LPP. More importantly, excessively greater integrative activity (at P3/LPP amplitude) was found in SAD participants, and this abnormal integrative activity in both early and late temporal stages was related to the larger interpretation bias of miscategorizing neutral face-voice combinations as angry. CONCLUSION The study revealed that neural correlates of multisensory processing was aberrant in SAD and it was related to the interpretation bias to multimodal social cues in multiple processing stages. Our findings suggest that deficit in multisensory processing might be an important factor in the psychopathology of SA.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shuzhen Gan
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China.,Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
| | - Weijun Li
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China.,Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Dalian, Liaoning, China
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Mobach L, Rinck M, Becker ES, Carl T, Klein AM, Rapee RM, Hudson JL. Facing Uncertainty: Interpretation of Ambiguous Emotional Faces in Childhood Social Anxiety Disorder. JOURNAL OF CLINICAL CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY : THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL FOR THE SOCIETY OF CLINICAL CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY, AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, DIVISION 53 2022; 51:955-969. [PMID: 35617097 DOI: 10.1080/15374416.2022.2070850] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE The current study examined whether children with a social anxiety disorder (SAD) demonstrate divergent facial emotion processing and a disorder-specific negative interpretation bias in the processing of facial emotional expressions. This study aimed to overcome previous study limitations by including both a nonsocially anxious control group and a healthy control group to examine whether childhood SAD is characterized by a general emotion labeling deficit, and/or by a negative interpretation bias, indicated by systematic misclassifications, or a lower threshold for recognizing threatening emotions. METHOD Participants were 132 children aged 7-12 years (Mage = 9.15; 45.5% female). Children with SAD (n = 42) were compared to children with other, nonsocial, anxiety disorders (n = 40) and healthy control children (n = 50) on a novel facial emotion recognition task. Children judged ambiguous happy/neutral, angry/neutral and fear/neutral faces that were morphed at different intensities (10%, 30%, 50%, 70%). RESULTS Children with SAD did not differ from other groups in their accuracy of identifying emotions. They did not show systematic misclassifications or a heightened sensitivity to negative, threatening faces either. Rather, children with nonsocial anxiety disorders showed a generally heightened sensitivity to emotional faces. CONCLUSIONS The current study does not provide evidence for a general deficit in labeling of emotional faces in childhood SAD. Childhood SAD was not characterized by an interpretation bias in processing emotional faces. Children with nonsocial anxiety disorders may benefit from assistance in accurately interpreting the degree of emotionality in interpersonal situations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lynn Mobach
- Department of Clinical Psychology, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University
- Centre for Emotional Health, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University
| | - Mike Rinck
- Department of Clinical Psychology, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University
| | - Eni S Becker
- Department of Clinical Psychology, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University
| | - Talia Carl
- Centre for Emotional Health, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University
| | - Anke M Klein
- Department of Clinical Psychology, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University
- Developmental and Educational Psychology of the Institute of Psychology, Leiden University
| | - Ronald M Rapee
- Centre for Emotional Health, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University
| | - Jennifer L Hudson
- Centre for Emotional Health, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University
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von Dawans B, Trueg A, Voncken M, Dziobek I, Kirschbaum C, Domes G, Heinrichs M. Empathy Modulates the Effects of Acute Stress on Anxious Appearance and Social Behavior in Social Anxiety Disorder. Front Psychiatry 2022; 13:875750. [PMID: 35911212 PMCID: PMC9326503 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.875750] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/14/2022] [Accepted: 06/06/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Patients suffering from social anxiety disorder (SAD) fear social interaction and evaluation, which severely undermines their everyday life. There is evidence of increased prosocial behavior after acute social stress exposure in healthy individuals, which may be interpreted as stress-regulating "tend-and-befriend" behavior. In a randomized controlled trial, we measured empathic abilities in a first diagnostic session. In the following experimental session, we investigated how patients with SAD (n = 60) and healthy control participants (HC) (n = 52) respond to an acute social stressor (Trier Social Stress Test for groups) or a non-stressful control condition, and whether empathic abilities and acute social stress interact to modulate anxious appearance and social behavior in a social conversation test. Salivary cortisol, heart rate, and subjective stress response were repeatedly measured. The anxious appearance and social behavior of participants were rated by the conversation partner. SAD patients demonstrated stronger subjective stress responses while the biological responses did not differ from HC. Moreover, patients performed worse overall in the conversation task, which stress additionally undermined. Finally, we found that both emotional and cognitive empathy buffered the negative effects of acute stress on social behavior in SAD, but not in HC. Our data highlight the importance of empathic abilities for SAD during stressful situations and call for multimodal clinical diagnostics. This may help to differentiate clinical subtypes and offer better-tailored treatment for patients. General Scientific Summary: This study shows that high levels of cognitive and emotional empathy can buffer the negative effects of acute stress on social behavior in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Empathic abilities may be included as an additional diagnostic resource marker for SAD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bernadette von Dawans
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, University of Trier, Trier, Germany
| | - Amalie Trueg
- Department of Psychology, Biological Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
| | - Marisol Voncken
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
| | - Isabel Dziobek
- Clinical Psychology of Social Interaction, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | | | - Gregor Domes
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, University of Trier, Trier, Germany
| | - Markus Heinrichs
- Department of Psychology, Biological Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
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Borgomaneri S, Vitale F, Battaglia S, Avenanti A. Early Right Motor Cortex Response to Happy and Fearful Facial Expressions: A TMS Motor-Evoked Potential Study. Brain Sci 2021; 11:brainsci11091203. [PMID: 34573224 PMCID: PMC8471632 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci11091203] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 14.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/30/2021] [Revised: 09/08/2021] [Accepted: 09/09/2021] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
The ability to rapidly process others' emotional signals is crucial for adaptive social interactions. However, to date it is still unclear how observing emotional facial expressions affects the reactivity of the human motor cortex. To provide insights on this issue, we employed single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate corticospinal motor excitability. Healthy participants observed happy, fearful and neutral pictures of facial expressions while receiving TMS over the left or right motor cortex at 150 and 300 ms after picture onset. In the early phase (150 ms), we observed an enhancement of corticospinal excitability for the observation of happy and fearful emotional faces compared to neutral expressions specifically in the right hemisphere. Interindividual differences in the disposition to experience aversive feelings (personal distress) in interpersonal emotional contexts predicted the early increase in corticospinal excitability for emotional faces. No differences in corticospinal excitability were observed at the later time (300 ms) or in the left M1. These findings support the notion that emotion perception primes the body for action and highlights the role of the right hemisphere in implementing a rapid and transient facilitatory response to emotional arousing stimuli, such as emotional facial expressions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Borgomaneri
- Centro Studi e Ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive, Dipartimento di Psicologia, Campus di Cesena, Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna, 47521 Cesena, Italy;
- IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, 00179 Rome, Italy
- Correspondence: (S.B.); (A.A.)
| | - Francesca Vitale
- Instituto Universitario de Neurociencia (IUNE), Universidad de La Laguna, 38200 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain;
| | - Simone Battaglia
- Centro Studi e Ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive, Dipartimento di Psicologia, Campus di Cesena, Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna, 47521 Cesena, Italy;
| | - Alessio Avenanti
- Centro Studi e Ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive, Dipartimento di Psicologia, Campus di Cesena, Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna, 47521 Cesena, Italy;
- Centro de Investigación en Neuropsicología y Neurosciencias Cognitivas, Universidad Católica Del Maule, Talca 3460000, Chile
- Correspondence: (S.B.); (A.A.)
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7
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Gladwin TE, Vink M. Anticipated Attack Slows Responses in a Cued Virtual Attack Emotional Sternberg Task. EUROPES JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY 2021; 17:31-43. [PMID: 33737972 PMCID: PMC7957854 DOI: 10.5964/ejop.1896] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2019] [Accepted: 04/13/2020] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
Threatening stimuli have varying effects, including reaction time (RT) increase in working memory tasks. This could reflect disruption of working memory or, alternatively, a reversible state of freezing. In the current series of experiments, reversible slowing due to anticipated threat was studied using the cued Virtual Attack Emotional Sternberg Task (cVAEST). In this task visually neutral cues indicate whether a future virtual attack could or could not occur during the maintenance period of a Sternberg task. Three studies (N = 47, 40, and 40, respectively) were performed by healthy adult participants online. The primary hypothesis was that the cVAEST would evoke anticipatory slowing. Further, the studies aimed to explore details of this novel task, in particular the interval between the cue and probe stimuli and the memory set size. In all studies it was found that threat anticipation slowed RTs on the working memory task. Further, Study 1 (memory set size 3) showed a decrease in RT when the attack occurred over all Cue Stimulus Intervals (CSIs). In Study 2 a minimal memory set of one item was used, under which circumstances RTs following attacks were only faster shortly after cue presentation (CSI 200 and 500 ms), when RTs were high for both threat and safe cues. Study 3 replicated results of Study 2 with more fine-grained time intervals. The results confirm that anticipation of attack stimuli can reversibly slow responses on an independent working memory task. The cVAEST may provide a useful method to study such threat-induced response slowing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas E. Gladwin
- Department of Psychology and Counselling, University of Chichester, Chichester, United Kingdom
- Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- Centre for Mental Health, Institute for Lifecourse Development, The University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom
| | - Matthijs Vink
- UMC Utrecht Brain Center, Utrecht University Medical Center, Utrecht, The Netherlands
- Developmental Psychology and Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Yao Y, Xuan Y, Wu R, Sang B. Regulatory Effects of Reward Anticipation and Target on Attention Processing of Emotional Stimulation. Front Psychol 2020; 11:1170. [PMID: 32581965 PMCID: PMC7283617 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01170] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/12/2019] [Accepted: 05/06/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Studies suggest that reward and emotion are interdependent. However, there are discrepancies regarding the interaction between these variables. Some researchers speculate that the inconsistent findings may be due to different targets being used. Although reward and emotion both affect attention, it is not clear whether their impacts are independent. This study examined the impact of reward anticipation on emotion processing for different targets. A cue-target paradigm was used, and behavior and eye-tracking data were recorded in an emotion or sex recognition task under the conditions of reward and non-reward anticipation. The results showed that when the target was related to the emotional attribute of the stimulus, the reward promoted the processing target information, thereby generating reward-oriented attention. When the target was unrelated to the emotional attributes of the stimulus, the reward did not promote the processing target information, and at the same time, individuals had negative emotional biases toward the emotional faces. The results revealed that, in addition to affecting the attention to emotional faces independently, the target regulated the promotion of reward anticipation to emotional attention and attention bias toward negative stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yujia Yao
- Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China
| | - Yuyang Xuan
- Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China
| | - Ruirui Wu
- Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China
| | - Biao Sang
- Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, Shanghai, China
- East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
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Blair KS, Bashford-Largo J, Shah N, Lukoff J, Elowsky J, Vogel S, Emmert A, Zhang R, Dobbertin M, Pollak S, Blair JR. Sexual Abuse in Adolescents Is Associated With Atypically Increased Responsiveness Within Regions Implicated in Self-Referential and Emotional Processing to Approaching Animate Threats. Front Psychiatry 2020; 11:345. [PMID: 32612545 PMCID: PMC7308525 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00345] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/05/2019] [Accepted: 04/06/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Childhood sexual abuse is associated with significant subsequent pathology and neurodevelopmental disruption. In particular, childhood sexual abuse has been associated with heightened threat sensitivity. However, little work has directly investigated this issue. In this study, we examine the association of childhood sexual abuse to neural and behavioral responses to looming, threatening face stimuli. The study involved 23 adolescents with significant past sexual abuse and 24 comparison individuals matched on IQ, age, and sex. Participants were scanned during a looming threat task that involved negative and neutral, human faces and animals that appeared to either loom toward or recede from the participant. We found that adolescents who had been previously subjected to sexual abuse, relative to comparison adolescents, showed increased neural responses to threatening looming stimuli in regions including rostral and superior frontal gyrus as well as posterior cingulate gyrus. In addition, they were significantly more slowed by looming stimuli, particularly if these were human faces, than adolescents who had not been exposed. These data demonstrate that prior sexual abuse was associated with heightened neural responsiveness to looming threats in a series of regions beyond the amygdala. These data are interpreted within models of rostromedial frontal and posterior cingulate cortices that stress their role in self-referential emotional processing and emotional maintenance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Karina S Blair
- Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States
| | - Johannah Bashford-Largo
- Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States
| | - Niraj Shah
- Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States
| | - Jennie Lukoff
- Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States
| | - Jaimie Elowsky
- Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States
| | - Steven Vogel
- Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States
| | - Amanda Emmert
- Department of Psychiatry, Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, NE, United States
| | - Ru Zhang
- Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States
| | - Matthew Dobbertin
- Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States
| | - Seth Pollak
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States
| | - James R Blair
- Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States
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Simon JJ, Stopyra MA, Friederich HC. Neural Processing of Disorder-Related Stimuli in Patients with Anorexia Nervosa: A Narrative Review of Brain Imaging Studies. J Clin Med 2019; 8:jcm8071047. [PMID: 31323803 PMCID: PMC6678397 DOI: 10.3390/jcm8071047] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/22/2019] [Revised: 07/08/2019] [Accepted: 07/10/2019] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Abnormalities and alterations in brain function are commonly associated with the etiology and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). Different symptom categories of AN have been correlated with distinct neurobiological patterns in previous studies. The aim of this literature review is to provide a narrative overview of the investigations into neural correlates of disorder-specific stimuli in patients with AN. Although findings vary across studies, a summary of neuroimaging results according to stimulus category allows us to account for methodological differences in experimental paradigms. Based on the available evidence, the following conclusions can be made: (a) the neural processing of visual food cues is characterized by increased top-down control, which enables restrictive eating, (b) increased emotional and reward processing during gustatory stimulation triggers disorder-specific thought patterns, (c) hunger ceases to motivate food foraging but instead reinforces disorder-related behaviors, (d) body image processing is related to increased emotional and hedonic reactions, (e) emotional stimuli provoke increased saliency associated with decreased top-down control and (f) neural hypersensitivity during interoceptive processing reinforces avoidance behavior. Taken together, studies that investigated symptom-specific neural processing have contributed to a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of AN.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joe J Simon
- Department of General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics, Centre for Psychosocial Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
| | - Marion A Stopyra
- Department of General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics, Centre for Psychosocial Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Hans-Christoph Friederich
- Department of General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics, Centre for Psychosocial Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
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Klumpp H, Fitzgerald JM. Neuroimaging Predictors and Mechanisms of Treatment Response in Social Anxiety Disorder: an Overview of the Amygdala. Curr Psychiatry Rep 2018; 20:89. [PMID: 30155657 PMCID: PMC9278878 DOI: 10.1007/s11920-018-0948-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/01/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE OF REVIEW Aberrant amygdala activity is implicated in the neurobiology of social anxiety disorder (SAD) and is, therefore, a treatment target. However, the extent to which amygdala predicts clinical improvement or is impacted by treatment has not been critically examined. This review highlights recent neuroimaging findings from clinical trials and research that test links between amygdala and mechanisms of action. RECENT FINDINGS Neuropredictor studies largely comprised psychotherapy where improvement was foretold by amygdala activity and regions beyond amygdala such as frontal structures (e.g., anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex) and areas involved in visual processes (e.g., occipital regions, superior temporal gyrus). Pre-treatment functional connectivity between amygdala and frontal areas was also shown to predict improvement signifying circuits that support emotion processing and regulation interact with treatment. Pre-to-post studies revealed decreases in amygdala response and altered functional connectivity in amygdala pathways regardless of treatment modality. In analogue studies of fear exposure, greater reduction in anxiety was predicted by less amygdala response to a speech challenge and amygdala activity decreased following exposures. Yet, studies have also failed to detect amygdala effects reporting instead treatment-related changes in regions and functional systems that support sensory, emotion, and regulation processes. An array of regions in the corticolimbic subcircuits and extrastriate cortex appear to be viable sites of action. The amygdala and amygdala pathways predict treatment outcome and are altered following treatment. However, further study is needed to establish the role of the amygdala and other candidate regions and brain circuits as sites of action.
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Affiliation(s)
- Heide Klumpp
- Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1747 W. Roosevelt Rd, Chicago, IL, 60608, USA.
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12
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Rawdon C, Murphy D, Motyer G, Munafò MR, Penton-Voak I, Fitzgerald A. An investigation of emotion recognition training to reduce symptoms of social anxiety in adolescence. Psychiatry Res 2018; 263:257-267. [PMID: 29602534 DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2018.02.023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2017] [Revised: 02/06/2018] [Accepted: 02/06/2018] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Abstract
This study aimed to examine the effect of emotion recognition training on social anxiety symptoms among adolescents, aged 15-18 years. The study included a screening session, which identified participants who scored above a cut-off on a self-report measure of social anxiety for enrolment into a randomized controlled trial (Clinical Trials ID: NCT02550379). Participants were randomized to an intervention condition designed to increase the perception of happiness over disgust in ambiguous facial expressions or a sham intervention control condition, and completed self-report measures of social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, anxiety-related disorders, and depressive symptoms. The intervention group demonstrated a strong shift in the balance point at which they perceived happiness over disgust in ambiguous facial expressions. This increase in positive perception was not associated with any changes in the primary outcome of social anxiety; however, some evidence of improvement in symptomatology was observed on one of a number of secondary outcomes. Those in the intervention group had lower depression symptoms at 2-week follow-up, compared to those in the control group who received the sham intervention training. Potential reasons for why the shift in balance point measurement was not associated with a concurrent shift in symptoms of social anxiety are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Caroline Rawdon
- School of Nursing and Human Sciences, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin 9, Ireland.
| | - Daria Murphy
- University College Dublin School of Psychology, Newman Building Belfield, Dublin 4 Dublin, Leinster Ireland.
| | - Gillian Motyer
- University College Dublin School of Psychology, Newman Building Belfield, Dublin 4 Dublin, Leinster Ireland.
| | - Marcus R Munafò
- School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 12a Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TU, United Kingdom; MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, University of Bristol, 12a Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TU, United Kingdom; National Institute for Health Research Bristol Biomedical Research Centre, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust and University of Bristol, United Kingdom.
| | - Ian Penton-Voak
- School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 12a Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TU, United Kingdom; National Institute for Health Research Bristol Biomedical Research Centre, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust and University of Bristol, United Kingdom.
| | - Amanda Fitzgerald
- University College Dublin School of Psychology, Newman Building Belfield, Dublin 4 Dublin, Leinster Ireland.
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13
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McTeague LM, Laplante MC, Bulls HW, Shumen JR, Lang PJ, Keil A. Face Perception in Social Anxiety: Visuocortical Dynamics Reveal Propensities for Hypervigilance or Avoidance. Biol Psychiatry 2018; 83:618-628. [PMID: 29157845 PMCID: PMC5889302 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.10.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2017] [Revised: 09/11/2017] [Accepted: 10/02/2017] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Theories of aberrant attentional processing in social anxiety, and anxiety disorders more broadly, have postulated an initial hypervigilance or facilitation to clinically relevant threats and consequent defensive avoidance. However, existing objective measurements utilized to explore this phenomenon lack the resolution to elucidate attentional dynamics, particularly covert influences. METHODS We utilized a continuous measure of visuocortical engagement, the steady-state visual evoked potential in response to naturalistic angry, fearful, happy, and neutral facial expressions. Participants were treatment-seeking patients with principal diagnoses of social anxiety circumscribed to performance situations (n = 21) or generalized across interaction contexts (n = 42), treatment-seeking patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia (n = 25), and 17 healthy participants. RESULTS At the principal disorder level, only circumscribed social anxiety patients showed sustained visuocortical facilitation to aversive facial expressions. Control participants as well as patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia and generalized social anxiety showed no bias. More finely stratifying the sample according to clinical judgment of social anxiety severity and interference revealed a linear increase in visuocortical bias to aversive expressions for all but the most severely impaired patients. This group showed an opposing sustained attentional disengagement. CONCLUSIONS Rather than shifts between covert vigilance and avoidance of aversive facial expressions, social anxiety appears to confer a sustained bias for one or the other. While vigilant attention reliably increases with social anxiety severity for the majority of patients, the most impaired patients show an opposing avoidance. These distinct patterns of attentional allocation could provide a powerful means of personalizing neuroscience-based interventions to modify attention bias and related impairment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lisa M McTeague
- Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina.
| | | | - Hailey W Bulls
- Department of Health Outcomes and Behavior, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa
| | - Joshua R Shumen
- Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
| | - Peter J Lang
- Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
| | - Andreas Keil
- Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
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14
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Overestimation of threat from neutral faces and voices in social anxiety. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry 2017; 57:206-211. [PMID: 28708974 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2017.06.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2017] [Revised: 06/08/2017] [Accepted: 06/21/2017] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Social anxiety (SA) is associated with a tendency to interpret social information in a more threatening manner. Most of the research in SA has focused on unimodal exploration (mostly based on facial expressions), thus neglecting the ubiquity of cross-modality. To fill this gap, the present study sought to explore whether SA influences the interpretation of facial and vocal expressions presented separately or jointly. METHODS Twenty-five high socially anxious (HSA) and 29 low socially anxious (LSA) participants completed a forced two-choice emotion identification task consisting of angry and neutral expressions conveyed by faces, voices or combined faces and voices. Participants had to identify the emotion (angry or neutral) of the presented cues as quickly and precisely as possible. RESULTS Our results showed that, compared to LSA, HSA individuals show a higher propensity to misattribute anger to neutral expressions independent of cue modality and despite preserved decoding accuracy. We also found a cross-modal facilitation effect at the level of accuracy (i.e., higher accuracy in the bimodal condition compared to unimodal ones). However, such effect was not moderated by SA. LIMITATIONS Although the HSA group showed clinical cut-off scores at the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, one limitation is that we did not administer diagnostic interviews. Upcoming studies may want to test whether these results can be generalized to a clinical population. CONCLUSIONS These findings highlight the usefulness of a cross-modal perspective to probe the specificity of biases in SA.
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15
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Simon D, Becker M, Mothes-Lasch M, Miltner WHR, Straube T. Loud and angry: sound intensity modulates amygdala activation to angry voices in social anxiety disorder. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2017; 12:409-416. [PMID: 27651541 PMCID: PMC5390751 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsw131] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/11/2015] [Accepted: 09/06/2016] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Angry expressions of both voices and faces represent disorder-relevant stimuli in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Although individuals with SAD show greater amygdala activation to angry faces, previous work has failed to find comparable effects for angry voices. Here, we investigated whether voice sound-intensity, a modulator of a voice's threat-relevance, affects brain responses to angry prosody in SAD. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore brain responses to voices varying in sound intensity and emotional prosody in SAD patients and healthy controls (HCs). Angry and neutral voices were presented either with normal or high sound amplitude, while participants had to decide upon the speaker's gender. Loud vs normal voices induced greater insula activation, and angry vs neutral prosody greater orbitofrontal cortex activation in SAD as compared with HC subjects. Importantly, an interaction of sound intensity, prosody and group was found in the insula and the amygdala. In particular, the amygdala showed greater activation to loud angry voices in SAD as compared with HC subjects. This finding demonstrates a modulating role of voice sound-intensity on amygdalar hyperresponsivity to angry prosody in SAD and suggests that abnormal processing of interpersonal threat signals in amygdala extends beyond facial expressions in SAD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Doerte Simon
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str., 52, D-48149 Münster, Germany and
| | - Michael Becker
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str., 52, D-48149 Münster, Germany and
| | - Martin Mothes-Lasch
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str., 52, D-48149 Münster, Germany and
| | - Wolfgang H R Miltner
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena
| | - Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str., 52, D-48149 Münster, Germany and
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16
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Electrocortical measures of information processing biases in social anxiety disorder: A review. Biol Psychol 2017; 129:324-348. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.09.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2017] [Revised: 09/18/2017] [Accepted: 09/23/2017] [Indexed: 01/06/2023]
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17
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Becker MPI, Simon D, Miltner WHR, Straube T. Altered activation of the ventral striatum under performance-related observation in social anxiety disorder. Psychol Med 2017; 47:2502-2512. [PMID: 28464974 DOI: 10.1017/s0033291717001076] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by fear of social and performance situations. The consequence of scrutiny by others for the neural processing of performance feedback in SAD is unknown. METHODS We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activation to positive, negative, and uninformative performance feedback in patients diagnosed with SAD and age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy control subjects who performed a time estimation task during a social observation condition and a non-social control condition: while either being monitored or unmonitored by a body camera, subjects received performance feedback after performing a time estimation that they could not fully evaluate without external feedback. RESULTS We found that brain activation in ventral striatum (VS) and midcingulate cortex was modulated by an interaction of social context and feedback type. SAD patients showed a lack of social-context-dependent variation of feedback processing, while control participants showed an enhancement of brain responses specifically to positive feedback in VS during observation. CONCLUSIONS The present findings emphasize the importance of social-context processing in SAD by showing that scrutiny prevents appropriate reward-processing-related signatures in response to positive performances in SAD.
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Affiliation(s)
- M P I Becker
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology,Friedrich Schiller University,D-07743 Jena,Germany
| | - D Simon
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology,Friedrich Schiller University,D-07743 Jena,Germany
| | - W H R Miltner
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology,Friedrich Schiller University,D-07743 Jena,Germany
| | - T Straube
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology,Friedrich Schiller University,D-07743 Jena,Germany
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18
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Exogenous testosterone affects early threat processing in socially anxious and healthy women. Biol Psychol 2017; 129:82-89. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.08.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/19/2016] [Revised: 08/07/2017] [Accepted: 08/08/2017] [Indexed: 01/14/2023]
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19
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Schwab D, Schienle A. Facial affect processing in social anxiety disorder with early onset: evidence of an intensity amplification bias. Soc Neurosci 2017; 13:318-327. [DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2017.1304990] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Daniela Schwab
- Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
| | - Anne Schienle
- Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
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20
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Heitmann CY, Feldker K, Neumeister P, Brinkmann L, Schrammen E, Zwitserlood P, Straube T. Brain activation to task-irrelevant disorder-related threat in social anxiety disorder: The impact of symptom severity. NEUROIMAGE-CLINICAL 2017; 14:323-333. [PMID: 28224080 PMCID: PMC5310170 DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2017.01.020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/26/2016] [Revised: 12/21/2016] [Accepted: 01/18/2017] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Abstract
Unintentional and uncontrollable processing of threat has been suggested to contribute to the pathology of social anxiety disorder (SAD). The present study investigated the neural correlates of processing task-irrelevant, highly ecologically valid, disorder-related stimuli as a function of symptom severity in SAD. Twenty-four SAD patients and 24 healthy controls (HC) performed a feature-based comparison task during functional magnetic resonance imaging, while task-irrelevant, disorder-related or neutral scenes were presented simultaneously at a different spatial position. SAD patients showed greater activity than HC in response to disorder-related versus neutral scenes in brain regions associated with self-referential processing (e.g. insula, precuneus, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) and emotion regulation (e.g. dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), inferior frontal gyrus). Symptom severity was positively associated with amygdala activity, and negatively with activation in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and dlPFC in SAD patients. Additional correlation analysis revealed that amygdala-prefrontal coupling was positively associated with symptom severity. A network of brain regions is thus involved in SAD patients' processing of task-irrelevant, complex, ecologically valid, disorder-related scenes. Furthermore, increasing symptom severity in SAD patients seems to reflect a growing imbalance between neural mechanisms related to stimulus-driven bottom-up and regulatory top-down processes resulting in dysfunctional regulation strategies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carina Yvonne Heitmann
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Katharina Feldker
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Paula Neumeister
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Leonie Brinkmann
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | - Elisabeth Schrammen
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
| | | | - Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany
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21
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Peterburs J, Sandrock C, Miltner WHR, Straube T. Look who's judging—Feedback source modulates brain activation to performance feedback in social anxiety. Neuroimage 2016; 133:430-437. [PMID: 27033687 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.03.036] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2015] [Revised: 02/17/2016] [Accepted: 03/16/2016] [Indexed: 12/20/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Jutta Peterburs
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Münster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 52, 48149 Münster, Germany.
| | - Carolin Sandrock
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, University of Jena, Am Steiger 3, Haus 1, 07743 Jena, Germany
| | - Wolfgang H R Miltner
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, University of Jena, Am Steiger 3, Haus 1, 07743 Jena, Germany
| | - Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Münster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 52, 48149 Münster, Germany
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22
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Straube T. Effects of Psychotherapy on Brain Activation Patterns in Anxiety Disorders. ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PSYCHOLOGIE-JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY 2016. [DOI: 10.1027/2151-2604/a000240] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
Abstract. Psychotherapy is an effective treatment for most mental disorders, including anxiety disorders. Successful psychotherapy implies new learning experiences and therefore neural alterations. With the increasing availability of functional neuroimaging methods, it has become possible to investigate psychotherapeutically induced neuronal plasticity across the whole brain in controlled studies. However, the detectable effects strongly depend on neuroscientific methods, experimental paradigms, analytical strategies, and sample characteristics. This article summarizes the state of the art, discusses current theoretical and methodological issues, and suggests future directions of the research on the neurobiology of psychotherapy in anxiety disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Münster, Germany
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23
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Heitmann CY, Feldker K, Neumeister P, Zepp BM, Peterburs J, Zwitserlood P, Straube T. Abnormal brain activation and connectivity to standardized disorder-related visual scenes in social anxiety disorder. Hum Brain Mapp 2016; 37:1559-72. [PMID: 26806013 PMCID: PMC6867294 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.23120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2015] [Revised: 01/07/2016] [Accepted: 01/07/2016] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Our understanding of altered emotional processing in social anxiety disorder (SAD) is hampered by a heterogeneity of findings, which is probably due to the vastly different methods and materials used so far. This is why the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated immediate disorder-related threat processing in 30 SAD patients and 30 healthy controls (HC) with a novel, standardized set of highly ecologically valid, disorder-related complex visual scenes. SAD patients rated disorder-related as compared with neutral scenes as more unpleasant, arousing and anxiety-inducing than HC. On the neural level, disorder-related as compared with neutral scenes evoked differential responses in SAD patients in a widespread emotion processing network including (para-)limbic structures (e.g. amygdala, insula, thalamus, globus pallidus) and cortical regions (e.g. dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and precuneus). Functional connectivity analysis yielded an altered interplay between PCC/precuneus and paralimbic (insula) as well as cortical regions (dmPFC, precuneus) in SAD patients, which emphasizes a central role for PCC/precuneus in disorder-related scene processing. Hyperconnectivity of globus pallidus with amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) additionally underlines the relevance of this region in socially anxious threat processing. Our findings stress the importance of specific disorder-related stimuli for the investigation of altered emotion processing in SAD. Disorder-related threat processing in SAD reveals anomalies at multiple stages of emotion processing which may be linked to increased anxiety and to dysfunctionally elevated levels of self-referential processing reported in previous studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carina Yvonne Heitmann
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, MuensterGermany
| | - Katharina Feldker
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, MuensterGermany
| | - Paula Neumeister
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, MuensterGermany
| | - Britta Maria Zepp
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, MuensterGermany
| | - Jutta Peterburs
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, MuensterGermany
| | | | - Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, MuensterGermany
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24
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What does the facial dot-probe task tell us about attentional processes in social anxiety? A systematic review. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry 2016; 50:40-51. [PMID: 26042381 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2015.04.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 109] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/14/2014] [Revised: 04/16/2015] [Accepted: 04/18/2015] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES Current models of SAD assume that attentional processes play a pivotal role in the etiology and maintenance of social anxiety disorder. Social anxiety is supposedly associated with an attentional bias towards disorder related stimuli such as threatening faces. Using the facial dot probe task in socially anxious individuals has, however, revealed inconsistent findings. METHODS The current systematic review aims at disentangling the heterogeneous findings using effect sizes across results by systematically taking into account potential moderating variables (stimulus type, stimulus duration, situational anxiety, disorder severity). RESULTS Results provide some evidence that socially anxious individuals preferentially allocate their attention towards threat faces compared to non-anxious controls. This bias seems to depend on the type of reference stimulus, stimulus duration and clinical level of social anxiety. Avoidance of threat was neither found at early, nor at later stages of attentional processing. LIMITATIONS Importantly, the results have to be considered in the light of the only few studies available. Given the heterogeneity of results and some methodological restrictions of the studies included, the picture of attentional bias seems to be much less clear than suggested in the recent social anxiety literature. CONCLUSIONS Methodologically, combined measures of dot-probe and eye movement measures might be beneficial to detect overt attentional biases. Importantly, our results show that preferential processing of threat cues might guide early attentional processes in social anxiety, depending however on several contextual and situational factors. Clinically, patients with greater severity of SAD may be more prone to such an attentional bias, thus therapists should take this into account when planning behavioral experiments and exposure therapy.
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25
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Wieser MJ, Moscovitch DA. The Effect of Affective Context on Visuocortical Processing of Neutral Faces in Social Anxiety. Front Psychol 2015; 6:1824. [PMID: 26648889 PMCID: PMC4663271 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01824] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/31/2015] [Accepted: 11/11/2015] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
It has been demonstrated that verbal context information alters the neural processing of ambiguous faces such as faces with no apparent facial expression. In social anxiety, neutral faces may be implicitly threatening for socially anxious individuals due to their ambiguous nature, but even more so if these neutral faces are put in self-referential negative contexts. Therefore, we measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to neutral faces which were preceded by affective verbal information (negative, neutral, positive). Participants with low social anxiety (LSA; n = 23) and high social anxiety (HSA; n = 21) were asked to watch and rate valence and arousal of the respective faces while continuous EEG was recorded. ERP analysis revealed that HSA showed elevated P100 amplitudes in response to faces, but reduced structural encoding of faces as indexed by reduced N170 amplitudes. In general, affective context led to an enhanced early posterior negativity (EPN) for negative compared to neutral facial expressions. Moreover, HSA compared to LSA showed enhanced late positive potentials (LPP) to negatively contextualized faces, whereas in LSA this effect was found for faces in positive contexts. Also, HSA rated faces in negative contexts as more negative compared to LSA. These results point at enhanced vigilance for neutral faces regardless of context in HSA, while structural encoding seems to be diminished (avoidance). Interestingly, later components of sustained processing (LPP) indicate that LSA show enhanced visuocortical processing for faces in positive contexts (happy bias), whereas this seems to be the case for negatively contextualized faces in HSA (threat bias). Finally, our results add further new evidence that top-down information in interaction with individual anxiety levels can influence early-stage aspects of visual perception.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - David A Moscovitch
- Department of Psychology and Centre for Mental Health Research, University of Waterloo Waterloo, Canada
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26
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Mueller EM, Pizzagalli DA. One-year-old fear memories rapidly activate human fusiform gyrus. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2015; 11:308-16. [PMID: 26416784 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsv122] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2015] [Accepted: 09/21/2015] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Fast threat detection is crucial for survival. In line with such evolutionary pressure, threat-signaling fear-conditioned faces have been found to rapidly (<80 ms) activate visual brain regions including the fusiform gyrus on the conditioning day. Whether remotely fear conditioned stimuli (CS) evoke similar early processing enhancements is unknown. Here, 16 participants who underwent a differential face fear-conditioning and extinction procedure on day 1 were presented the initial CS 24 h after conditioning (Recent Recall Test) as well as 9-17 months later (Remote Recall Test) while EEG was recorded. Using a data-driven segmentation procedure of CS evoked event-related potentials, five distinct microstates were identified for both the recent and the remote memory test. To probe intracranial activity, EEG activity within each microstate was localized using low resolution electromagnetic tomography analysis (LORETA). In both the recent (41-55 and 150-191 ms) and remote (45-90 ms) recall tests, fear conditioned faces potentiated rapid activation in proximity of fusiform gyrus, even in participants unaware of the contingencies. These findings suggest that rapid processing enhancements of conditioned faces persist over time.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erik M Mueller
- Department of Clinical Psychology, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, 35394 Giessen, Germany and
| | - Diego A Pizzagalli
- Center for Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research & McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA 02478, USA
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27
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Boehme S, Ritter V, Tefikow S, Stangier U, Strauss B, Miltner WHR, Straube T. Neural correlates of emotional interference in social anxiety disorder. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0128608. [PMID: 26042738 PMCID: PMC4456154 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128608] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2014] [Accepted: 04/28/2015] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Disorder-relevant but task-unrelated stimuli impair cognitive performance in social anxiety disorder (SAD); however, time course and neural correlates of emotional interference are unknown. The present study investigated time course and neural basis of emotional interference in SAD using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Patients with SAD and healthy controls performed an emotional stroop task which allowed examining interference effects on the current and the succeeding trial. Reaction time data showed an emotional interference effect in the current trial, but not the succeeding trial, specifically in SAD. FMRI data showed greater activation in the left amygdala, bilateral insula, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and left opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus during emotional interference of the current trial in SAD patients. Furthermore, we found a positive correlation between patients' interference scores and activation in the mPFC, dorsal ACC and left angular/supramarginal gyrus. Taken together, results indicate a network of brain regions comprising amygdala, insula, mPFC, ACC, and areas strongly involved in language processing during the processing of task-unrelated threat in SAD. However, specifically the activation in mPFC, dorsal ACC, and left angular/supramarginal gyrus is associated with the strength of the interference effect, suggesting a cognitive network model of attentional bias in SAD. This probably comprises exceeded allocation of attentional resources to disorder-related information of the presented stimuli and increased self-referential and semantic processing of threat words in SAD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephanie Boehme
- Laboratory of Psychophysiology and functional Imaging, Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics & Psychotherapy, University Hospital Würzburg, Fuechsleinstr. 15, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Am Steiger 3 // 1, D-07743 Jena, Germany
| | - Viktoria Ritter
- Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Varrentrappstr. 40–42, D-60486 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Susan Tefikow
- Institute of Psychosocial Medicine and Psychotherapy, Jena University Hospital—Friedrich Schiller University, Stoystr. 3, D-07740 Jena, Germany
| | - Ulrich Stangier
- Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Varrentrappstr. 40–42, D-60486 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Bernhard Strauss
- Institute of Psychosocial Medicine and Psychotherapy, Jena University Hospital—Friedrich Schiller University, Stoystr. 3, D-07740 Jena, Germany
| | - Wolfgang H. R. Miltner
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Am Steiger 3 // 1, D-07743 Jena, Germany
| | - Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 52, D-48149 Muenster, Germany
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Boehme S, Miltner WHR, Straube T. Neural correlates of self-focused attention in social anxiety. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2015; 10:856-62. [PMID: 25326038 PMCID: PMC4448029 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsu128] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2014] [Revised: 07/24/2014] [Accepted: 10/14/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Socially anxious individuals tend to shift their attention away from external socially threatening cues and instead become highly self-focused. Such heightened self-focused attention has been suggested to be involved in the development and maintenance of social anxiety disorder. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural correlates of self-focused attention in 16 high socially anxious (HSA) and 16 low socially anxious (LSA) individuals. Participants were instructed to focus their attention either inwardly or outwardly during a simulated social situation. Results indicate hyperactivation of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and temporal pole during inward vs outward attention in HSA compared with LSA participants. Furthermore, activation of mPFC, right anterior insula, TPJ and posterior cingulate cortex was positively correlated with the trait of self-focused attention in HSA subjects. Results highlight the prominent role of the mPFC and other cortical structures in abnormal self-focused attention in social anxiety. Finally, findings for the insula suggest increased processing of bodily states that is related to the amount of habitual self-focused attention in social anxiety.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephanie Boehme
- Laboratory of Psychophysiology and functional Imaging, Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics & Psychotherapy, University of Wüerzburg; Fuechsleinstr. 15, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Am Steiger 3//1, D-07743 Jena, Germany, and Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 52, D-48149 Muenster, Germany Laboratory of Psychophysiology and functional Imaging, Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics & Psychotherapy, University of Wüerzburg; Fuechsleinstr. 15, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Am Steiger 3//1, D-07743 Jena, Germany, and Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 52, D-48149 Muenster, Germany
| | - Wolfgang H R Miltner
- Laboratory of Psychophysiology and functional Imaging, Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics & Psychotherapy, University of Wüerzburg; Fuechsleinstr. 15, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Am Steiger 3//1, D-07743 Jena, Germany, and Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 52, D-48149 Muenster, Germany
| | - Thomas Straube
- Laboratory of Psychophysiology and functional Imaging, Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics & Psychotherapy, University of Wüerzburg; Fuechsleinstr. 15, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Am Steiger 3//1, D-07743 Jena, Germany, and Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 52, D-48149 Muenster, Germany
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29
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Soares SC, Rocha M, Neiva T, Rodrigues P, Silva CF. Social anxiety under load: the effects of perceptual load in processing emotional faces. Front Psychol 2015; 6:479. [PMID: 25954232 PMCID: PMC4404732 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00479] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/04/2014] [Accepted: 04/02/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Previous studies in the social anxiety arena have shown an impaired attentional control system, similar to that found in trait anxiety. However, the effect of task demands on social anxiety in socially threatening stimuli, such as angry faces, remains unseen. In the present study, 54 university students scoring high and low in the Social Interaction and Performance Anxiety and Avoidance Scale (SIPAAS) questionnaire, participated in a target letter discrimination task while task-irrelevant face stimuli (angry, disgust, happy, and neutral) were simultaneously presented. The results showed that high (compared to low) socially anxious individuals were more prone to distraction by task-irrelevant stimuli, particularly under high perceptual load conditions. More importantly, for such individuals, the accuracy proportions for angry faces significantly differed between the low and high perceptual load conditions, which is discussed in light of current evolutionary models of social anxiety.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sandra C Soares
- Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS), Department of Education, University of Aveiro , Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Marta Rocha
- Department of Education, University of Aveiro , Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Tiago Neiva
- Department of Education, University of Aveiro , Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Paulo Rodrigues
- Department of Psychology and Education, The University of Beira Interior , Covilhã, Portugal
| | - Carlos F Silva
- Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS), Department of Education, University of Aveiro , Aveiro, Portugal
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30
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Heitmann CY, Peterburs J, Mothes-Lasch M, Hallfarth MC, Böhme S, Miltner WHR, Straube T. Neural correlates of anticipation and processing of performance feedback in social anxiety. Hum Brain Mapp 2014; 35:6023-31. [PMID: 25099708 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.22602] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2014] [Revised: 07/25/2014] [Accepted: 07/29/2014] [Indexed: 11/05/2022] Open
Abstract
Fear of negative evaluation, such as negative social performance feedback, is the core symptom of social anxiety. The present study investigated the neural correlates of anticipation and perception of social performance feedback in social anxiety. High (HSA) and low (LSA) socially anxious individuals were asked to give a speech on a personally relevant topic and received standardized but appropriate expert performance feedback in a succeeding experimental session in which neural activity was measured during anticipation and presentation of negative and positive performance feedback concerning the speech performance, or a neutral feedback-unrelated control condition. HSA compared to LSA subjects reported greater anxiety during anticipation of negative feedback. Functional magnetic resonance imaging results showed deactivation of medial prefrontal brain areas during anticipation of negative feedback relative to the control and the positive condition, and medial prefrontal and insular hyperactivation during presentation of negative as well as positive feedback in HSA compared to LSA subjects. The results indicate distinct processes underlying feedback processing during anticipation and presentation of feedback in HSA as compared to LSA individuals. In line with the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in self-referential information processing and the insula in interoception, social anxiety seems to be associated with lower self-monitoring during feedback anticipation, and an increased self-focus and interoception during feedback presentation, regardless of feedback valence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carina Y Heitmann
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany
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31
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Borgomaneri S, Gazzola V, Avenanti A. Transcranial magnetic stimulation reveals two functionally distinct stages of motor cortex involvement during perception of emotional body language. Brain Struct Funct 2014; 220:2765-81. [PMID: 25023734 PMCID: PMC4549387 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-014-0825-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 71] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/08/2014] [Accepted: 06/12/2014] [Indexed: 12/25/2022]
Abstract
Studies indicate that perceiving emotional body language recruits fronto-parietal regions involved in action execution. However, the nature of such motor activation is unclear. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) we provide correlational and causative evidence of two distinct stages of motor cortex engagement during emotion perception. Participants observed pictures of body expressions and categorized them as happy, fearful or neutral while receiving TMS over the left or right motor cortex at 150 and 300 ms after picture onset. In the early phase (150 ms), we observed a reduction of excitability for happy and fearful emotional bodies that was specific to the right hemisphere and correlated with participants’ disposition to feel personal distress. This ‘orienting’ inhibitory response to emotional bodies was also paralleled by a general drop in categorization accuracy when stimulating the right but not the left motor cortex. Conversely, at 300 ms, greater excitability for negative, positive and neutral movements was found in both hemispheres. This later motor facilitation marginally correlated with participants’ tendency to assume the psychological perspectives of others and reflected simulation of the movement implied in the neutral and emotional body expressions. These findings highlight the motor system’s involvement during perception of emotional bodies. They suggest that fast orienting reactions to emotional cues—reflecting neural processing necessary for visual perception—occur before motor features of the observed emotional expression are simulated in the motor system and that distinct empathic dispositions influence these two neural motor phenomena. Implications for theories of embodied simulation are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Borgomaneri
- Department of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Groningen and University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
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Peschard V, Maurage P, Philippot P. Towards a cross-modal perspective of emotional perception in social anxiety: review and future directions. Front Hum Neurosci 2014; 8:322. [PMID: 24860488 PMCID: PMC4030159 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00322] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2013] [Accepted: 04/30/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The excessive fear of being negatively evaluated constitutes a central component of social anxiety (SA). Models posit that selective attention to threat and biased interpretations of ambiguous stimuli contribute to the maintenance of this psychopathology. There is strong support for the existence of processing biases but most of the available evidence comes from face research. Emotions are, however, not only conveyed through facial cues, but also through other channels, such as vocal and postural cues. These non-facial cues have yet received much less attention. We therefore plead for a cross-modal investigation of biases in SA. We argue that the inclusion of new modalities may be an efficient research tool to (1) address the specificity or generalizability of these biases; (2) offer an insight into the potential influence of SA on cross-modal processes; (3) operationalize emotional ambiguity by manipulating cross-modal emotional congruency; (4) inform the debate about the role of top-down and bottom-up factors in biasing attention; and (5) probe the cross-modal generalizability of cognitive training. Theoretical and clinical implications as well as potential fruitful avenues for research are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Virginie Peschard
- Laboratory for Experimental Psychopathology, Institute of Psychology, Université Catholique de Louvain Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
| | - Pierre Maurage
- Laboratory for Experimental Psychopathology, Institute of Psychology, Université Catholique de Louvain Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
| | - Pierre Philippot
- Laboratory for Experimental Psychopathology, Institute of Psychology, Université Catholique de Louvain Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
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Morel S, George N, Foucher A, Chammat M, Dubal S. ERP evidence for an early emotional bias towards happy faces in trait anxiety. Biol Psychol 2014; 99:183-92. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2014.03.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2013] [Revised: 03/23/2014] [Accepted: 03/24/2014] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
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Boehme S, Mohr A, Becker MPI, Miltner WHR, Straube T. Area-dependent time courses of brain activation during video-induced symptom provocation in social anxiety disorder. BIOLOGY OF MOOD & ANXIETY DISORDERS 2014; 4:6. [PMID: 24921039 PMCID: PMC4052290 DOI: 10.1186/2045-5380-4-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2013] [Accepted: 04/11/2014] [Indexed: 05/16/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Previous functional imaging studies using symptom provocation in patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) reported inconsistent findings, which might be at least partially related to different time-dependent activation profiles in different brain areas. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we used a novel video-based symptom provocation design in order to investigate the magnitude and time course of activation in different brain areas in 20 SAD patients and 20 healthy controls. RESULTS The disorder-related videos induced increased anxiety in patients with SAD as compared to healthy controls. Analyses of brain activation to disorder-related versus neutral video clips revealed amygdala activation during the first but not during the second half of the clips in patients as compared to controls. In contrast, the activation in the insula showed a reversed pattern with increased activation during the second but not during the first half of the video clips. Furthermore, a cluster in the anterior dorsal anterior cingulate cortex showed a sustained response for the entire duration of the videos. CONCLUSIONS The present findings suggest that different regions of the fear network show differential temporal response patterns during video-induced symptom provocation in SAD. While the amygdala is involved during initial threat processing, the insula seems to be more involved during subsequent anxiety responses. In accordance with cognitive models of SAD, a medial prefrontal region engaged in emotional-cognitive interactions is generally hyperactivated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephanie Boehme
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Am Steiger 3 // 1, Jena D-07743, Germany
| | - Alexander Mohr
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Am Steiger 3 // 1, Jena D-07743, Germany
| | - Michael PI Becker
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 52, Muenster D-48149, Germany
| | - Wolfgang HR Miltner
- Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Am Steiger 3 // 1, Jena D-07743, Germany
| | - Thomas Straube
- Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 52, Muenster D-48149, Germany
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Reduced anterior temporal and hippocampal functional connectivity during face processing discriminates individuals with social anxiety disorder from healthy controls and panic disorder, and increases following treatment. Neuropsychopharmacology 2014; 39:425-34. [PMID: 24084831 PMCID: PMC3870777 DOI: 10.1038/npp.2013.211] [Citation(s) in RCA: 49] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2013] [Revised: 08/14/2013] [Accepted: 08/14/2013] [Indexed: 01/28/2023]
Abstract
Group functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies suggest that anxiety disorders are associated with anomalous brain activation and functional connectivity (FC). However, brain-based features sensitive enough to discriminate individual subjects with a specific anxiety disorder and that track symptom severity longitudinally, desirable qualities for putative disorder-specific biomarkers, remain to be identified. Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI during emotional face perceptual tasks and a new, large-scale and condition-dependent FC and machine learning approach were used to identify features (pair-wise correlations) that discriminated patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD, N=16) from controls (N=19). We assessed whether these features discriminated SAD from panic disorder (PD, N=16), and SAD from controls in an independent replication sample that performed a similar task at baseline (N: SAD=15, controls=17) and following 8-weeks paroxetine treatment (N: SAD=12, untreated controls=7). High SAD vs HCs discrimination (area under the ROC curve, AUC, arithmetic mean of sensitivity and specificity) was achieved with two FC features during unattended neutral face perception (AUC=0.88, P<0.05 corrected). These features also discriminated SAD vs PD (AUC=0.82, P=0.0001) and SAD vs HCs in the independent replication sample (FC during unattended angry face perception, AUC=0.71, P=0.01). The most informative FC was left hippocampus-left temporal pole, which was reduced in both SAD samples (replication sample P=0.027), and this FC increased following the treatment (post>pre, t(11)=2.9, P=0.007). In conclusion, SAD is associated with reduced FC between left temporal pole and left hippocampus during face perception, and results suggest promise for emerging FC-based biomarkers for SAD diagnosis and treatment effects.
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Vázquez-Roque RA, Ubhi K, Masliah E, Flores G. Chronic cerebrolysin administration attenuates neuronal abnormalities in the basolateral amygdala induced by neonatal ventral hippocampus lesion in the rat. Synapse 2013; 68:31-8. [DOI: 10.1002/syn.21718] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/03/2013] [Accepted: 09/07/2013] [Indexed: 01/02/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Rubén Antonio Vázquez-Roque
- Laboratorio de Neuropsiquiatría, Instituto de Fisiología; Universidad Autónoma de Puebla; 14 Sur 6301, CP 72570 Puebla México
| | - Kiren Ubhi
- Department of Neurosciences; University of California; San Diego, La Jolla California 92093-0624
| | - Eliezer Masliah
- Laboratorio de Neuropsiquiatría, Instituto de Fisiología; Universidad Autónoma de Puebla; 14 Sur 6301, CP 72570 Puebla México
| | - Gonzalo Flores
- Laboratorio de Neuropsiquiatría, Instituto de Fisiología; Universidad Autónoma de Puebla; 14 Sur 6301, CP 72570 Puebla México
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