Abnormal brain activation and connectivity to standardized disorder-related visual scenes in social anxiety disorder

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 imme...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Human brain mapping Vol. 37; no. 4; pp. 1559 - 1572
Main Authors:	Heitmann, Carina Yvonne, Feldker, Katharina, Neumeister, Paula, Zepp, Britta Maria, Peterburs, Jutta, Zwitserlood, Pienie, Straube, Thomas
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-04-2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc John Wiley and Sons Inc
Subjects:	Adult amygdala Anxiety Disorders - diagnostic imaging Anxiety Disorders - physiopathology default-mode-network Female globus pallidus Humans Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods Male Nerve Net - diagnostic imaging Nerve Net - physiopathology Phobia, Social - diagnostic imaging Phobia, Social - physiopathology Photic Stimulation - methods Pilot Projects precuneus psychophysiological interaction Random Allocation self-referential processing social phobia Young Adult amygdala default-mode-network precuneus social phobia self-referential processing psychophysiological interaction globus pallidus
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	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. Hum Brain Mapp 37:1559‐1572, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Bibliography:	ark:/67375/WNG-J0FH9QWB-3 istex:7C72DDFB611D157C75102AD53A6DA5BDAE0F12CC ArticleID:HBM23120 German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) - No. SFB/TRR 58: C06, C07 ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	1065-9471 1097-0193
DOI:	10.1002/hbm.23120