Changes in EEG Cross-Frequency Coupling During Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder

Abstract

Coupling between EEG delta and beta oscillations is enhanced among anxious and healthy individuals during anticipatory anxiety. EEG coupling patterns associated with psychotherapy have not yet been quantified in socially anxious individuals. In this study, we used a double baseline, repeated measures design, in which 25 adults with a principal diagnosis of social anxiety disorder completed 12 weekly sessions of standardized group cognitive behavioral therapy and four EEG assessments: two at pretreatment, one at midtreatment, and one at posttreatment. Treatment was associated with reductions in symptom severity across multiple measures and informants, as well as reductions in delta-beta coupling at rest and during speech anticipation. Moreover, the clinical group exhibited greater coupling at pretreatment than did post hoc control participants with low social anxiety. The EEG cross-frequency profiles in the clinical group normalized by the posttreatment assessment. These findings provide evidence of concomitant improvement in neural and behavioral functioning among socially anxious adults undergoing psychotherapy.

Emotional Stroop interference for threatening words is related to reduced EEG delta–beta coupling and low attentional control

“…However, the recent and relatively limited literature on this subject is not conclusive. Participant samples that would be expected to experience increased anxiety have been reported to demonstrate increased delta-beta coupling, for instance offspring of anxiety patients (Miskovic et al, 2011a(Miskovic et al, , 2011b. On the other hand, Velikova et al (2010) reported decreased deltabeta coupling in anxiety disorder patients.…”

“…Several papers support a hypothesis that delta-beta coupling may reflect cortical/sub-cortical crosstalk involved in affect regulation (Schutter and van Honk, 2005b;Schutter et al, 2006;van Peer et al, 2008;Velikova et al, 2010;Miskovic et al, 2010Miskovic et al, , 2011aMiskovic et al, , 2011b; for a review, see Schutter and Knyazev, in press). Theoretical models that suggest an important role for attentional control in affect regulation point at mediation of such processes through cortical/sub-cortical reciprocal networks (Ochsner and Gross, 2005;McRae et al, 2009).…”

“…Firstly, little is known about the relationship between deltabeta coupling and trait anxiety (or attentional threat processing) across the entire spectrum from non-anxious to clinically anxious people (a non-linear relationship may exist, for instance, see Schutter and Knyazev, in press), and so studies in clinical samples are surely needed. A recent paper (Miskovic et al, 2011a(Miskovic et al, , 2011b did report delta-beta coupling in patients with social anxiety disorder. The results showed that delta-beta coupling was reduced after cognitive behavioral therapy, but since the EEG data were collected immediately prior to a psychosocial stress procedure designed to increase state anxiety, these results may reflect anticipatory state anxiety (Knyazev et al, 2006;Miskovic et al, 2010;Knyazev, 2011).…”

“…It has been suggested that increased delta-beta coupling may reflect stronger functional coupling between the cerebral cortex and sub-cortical limbic structures (cortical/subcortical cross-talk) reflecting emotion-regulation processes (e.g., Schutter and van Honk, 2005b;Schutter et al, 2006;Velikova et al, 2010;Miskovic et al, 2011aMiskovic et al, , 2011bSchutter and Knyazev, in press). Frontal delta-beta coupling has been related to salivary concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol (Schutter and van Honk, 2005b).…”

Using affective brain-computer interfaces to characterize human influential factors for speech quality-of-experience perception modelling

“…Typical EEG-aBCI features involve the calculation of specific EEG frequency subband powers, such as delta, theta, alpha, beta, or gamma sub-bands, as well as their interactions [44]. To characterize human affective states, the human prefrontal cortex (PFC) region has been widely used.…”