Altered time course of amygdala activation during speech anticipation in social anxiety disorder

Abstract

Background Exaggerated anticipatory anxiety is common in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Neuroimaging studies have revealed altered neural activity in response to social stimuli in SAD, but fewer studies have examined neural activity during anticipation of feared social stimuli in SAD. The current study examined the time course and magnitude of activity in threat processing brain regions during speech anticipation in socially anxious individuals and healthy controls (HC). Method Participants (SAD n = 58; HC n = 16) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during which they completed a 90s control anticipation task and 90s speech anticipation task. Repeated measures multi-level modeling analyses were used to examine group differences in time course activity during speech vs. control anticipation for regions of interest, including bilateral amygdala, insula, ventral striatum, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Results The time course of amygdala activity was more prolonged and less variable throughout speech anticipation in SAD participants compared to HCs, whereas the overall magnitude of amygdala response did not differ between groups. Magnitude and time course of activity was largely similar between groups across other regions of interest. Limitations Analyses were restricted to regions of interest and task order was the same across participants due to the nature of deception instructions. Conclusions Sustained amygdala time course during anticipation may uniquely reflect heightened detection of threat or deficits in emotion regulation in socially anxious individuals. Findings highlight the importance of examining temporal dynamics of amygdala responding.

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“…2). Thus, while some have provided supporting evidence, two studies have called this into question, with one report stating [17], 'These findings do not replicate previous studies. .…”

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“…However, the amygdala was not activated in response to our stimuli. This may be due to the nature of our stimuli, which were neutral or happy, and contrasted with the harsh and angry expressions used in previous studies that reported amygdala hyperactivation (Davies et al, 2017; Gentili et al, 2008; Phan et al, 2006; Stein et al, 2002). Insula activation was observed in our study, consistent with the finding of other studies (Boehme et al, 2014; Choi et al, 2016; Gentili et al, 2008; Kim et al, 2018; Straube et al, 2004).…”

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“…For example, structural studies have revealed altered grey matter volumes in the caudate nucleus and nucleus accumbens for SAD patients and individuals with increased social anxiety [80][81][82]. Concerning functional activity, the diagnosis of SAD affected the activation of the ventral striatum during anticipation of socially emotional outcomes and perception of social feedback [3,5,14,15,22]. Caudate nucleus activation was altered during the processing of socially emotional stimuli in SAD patients [7,[19][20][21].…”