Multimodal Remote Research on Social Anxiety Using a New Teleconferencing Paradigm

Background

Social anxiety is a prevalent mental health concern. Models of social anxiety incorporate multifaceted components from cognitive appraisals to attention as factors maintaining the disorder. Multimodal research investigating multiple facets of social anxiety simultaneously offers an important avenue to advance our understanding of the disorder.

Methods

The current study tested a novel, internet-based simulated teleconferencing interaction social stressor challenge and included the collection of self-report, eye-tracking, and auditory vocal data during the challenge. Participants (N = 262) completed two interactions. The pre-recorded male and female audience members (assigned to display interest or uninterest) discussed a topic and then prompted the participant to speak on that topic.

Results

Fidelity indices revealed that most participants rated the interactions with the simulated audience as realistic; reported heightened subjective distress during the simulated teleconferencing interactions; and correctly rated audience members' level of interest. As predicted, social anxiety predicted participants' subjective distress during the simulated teleconferencing interactions. Findings from audio vocal and eye tracking analyses largely corresponded to prior research - indicating that social anxiety influences audio vocal responses and patterns of attention during social stressors.

Conclusions

Taken together, these findings suggest that the simulated teleconferencing interaction framework introduced here offers a potentially useful approach for the remote investigation of mechanisms underpinning social anxiety.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10608-023-10371-y.

Applications of isradipine in human addiction studies: A systematic literature review

Given the personal and public health burden of addictive disorders, innovative approaches to treatment are sorely needed. This systematic review examined the use of the pharmacological agent isradipine in the context of potential applications for addiction treatment. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guided a comprehensive search of PubMed, Cochrane Library, and PsycINFO between the years 1985 to July 2022. Studies were included if isradipine was administered to adults with a current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5th edition diagnosis of a substance use disorder and/or to healthy volunteers alone and in conjunction with a substance (i.e, cocaine, methamphetamine, alcohol). A total of 16 studies with 252 participants were included in this review. Substantial variability was identified with study designs, isradipine dosages/dosing, and addictive substance of interest. Outcomes clustered in four categories: (a) cerebral blood flow (CBF), (b) hemodynamic effects, (c) subjective effects, and (d) cognitive effects. Isradipine was found to improve CBF in individuals with cocaine-induced hypoperfusion and in several studies was found to reduce parameters of blood pressure elevation after stimulant use. There were no significant findings on isradipine's effect on subjective reporting (i.e., craving, mood, drug affect) or cognition/attention. Given the limited number of studies identified in this review, there is insufficient data to draw clear conclusions. The direct effects of isradipine as a pharmacologic agent for addictive disorder treatment appear minimal, however, future work may benefit from examining the impact of isradipine as an augmentative agent within existing cue exposure paradigms for preventing cue-induced drug relapse. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).