Objective: While social phobia in adolescence predicts the illness in adulthood, no study has directly compared the neural responses in social phobia in adults and adolescents. The authors examined neural responses to facial expressions in adults and adolescents with social phobia to determine whether the neural correlates of adult social phobia during face processing also manifest in adolescent social phobia.
Method: Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses were compared in 39 medication-free participants with social phobia (25 adults and 14 adolescents) and 39 healthy comparison subjects (23 adults and 16 adolescents) matched on age, IQ, and gender. During fMRI scans, participants saw angry, fearful, and neutral expression stimuli while making a gender judgment.
Results: Significant diagnosis-by-emotion interactions were observed within the amygdala and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, as has previously been hypothesized. In these regions, both the adolescent and adult social phobia patients showed significantly increased BOLD responses relative to their respective age-matched comparison subjects, and there was no evidence of age-related modulation of between-group differences. These enhanced responses occurred specifically when viewing angry (rostral anterior cingulate cortex) and fearful (amygdala and rostral anterior cingulate cortex) expressions but not when viewing neutral expressions. In addition, the severity of social phobia was significantly correlated with the enhanced rostral anterior cingulate cortex response in the adults.
Conclusions: The neural correlates of adult social phobia during face processing also manifest in adolescents. Neural correlates that are observed in adult social phobia may represent the persistence of profiles established earlier in life rather than adaptive responses to such earlier perturbations or maturational changes. These cross-sectional observations might encourage longitudinal fMRI studies of adolescent social phobia.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3248999 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2011.10121740 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Social anxiety in adolescence and the first timing of parental home leaving and living with a partner: a longitudinal population-based Young-HUNT3 study in Norway.
Front Public Health
January 2025
Faculty of Nursing and Health Science, Nord University, Levanger, Norway.
Background: Social anxiety can make significant life transitions from adolescence to young adulthood particularly stressful. Despite the potential impact, few population-based longitudinal studies have examined the relationship between social anxiety and the timing of key markers of the transition to adulthood. This study investigated the association between social anxiety and the timing of two critical life events: first leaving the parental home and first living with a partner.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReliability and validity of four cognitive interpretation bias measures in the context of social anxiety.
Behav Res Methods
January 2025
Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
People with social anxiety disorder tend to interpret ambiguous social information in a negative rather than positive manner. Such interpretation biases may cause and maintain anxiety symptoms. However, there is considerable variability in the observed effects across studies, with some not finding a relationship between interpretation biases and social anxiety.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDo coping strategies mediate the effects of childhood adversities and traumata on clinical high-risk of psychosis, depression, and social phobia? A cross-sectional study on patients of an early detection service.
BMC Psychiatry
January 2025
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, Heinrich-Heine-University, Bergische Landstraße 2, Düsseldorf, 40629, Germany.
Background: Childhood adversities and traumata (CAT) increase the risk for various mental disorders, including the clinical high-risk of psychosis (CHR-P) state and its main comorbidities, i.e., depression, and social phobia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMental Health Outcomes of a National Cohort of Adults Born with Very Low Birthweight.
J Clin Med
December 2024
Canterbury Child Development Research Group, School of Health Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand.
Children born with a very low birthweight (VLBW; <1500 g) and/or very preterm (VPT; <32 weeks) are at increased risk of mental health problems, but adult data are inconsistent. We examined the prevalence of a range of mental health disorders in a national cohort of adults born with a VLBW, as well as associations between gestational age and mental health outcomes. All infants born with a VLBW in New Zealand in 1986 were followed prospectively from birth.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaternal Social Phobia, but not Generalized Anxiety, Symptoms Interact with Early Childhood Error-Related Negativity to Prospectively Predict Child Anxiety Symptoms.
Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol
January 2025
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, 4235 TAMU, College Station, TX, 77843, USA.
The error-related negativity (ERN) has been called a putative neural marker of anxiety risk in children, with smaller ERN amplitudes denoting greater risk in early childhood. Children of anxious mothers are at elevated risk for anxiety problems compared to children of non-anxious mothers. Still unknown is whether discrete maternal symptoms interact with child ERN to predict different forms of child anxiety risk, knowledge of which could increase our understanding of the specificity of known conditions and pathways for transgenerational effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!