Electrocortical measures of information processing biases in social anxiety disorder: A review

Abstract

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by information processing biases, however, their underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. The goal of this review was to give a comprehensive overview of the most frequently studied EEG spectral and event-related potential (ERP) measures in social anxiety during rest, anticipation, stimulus processing, and recovery. A Web of Science search yielded 35 studies reporting on electrocortical measures in individuals with social anxiety or related constructs. Social anxiety was related to increased delta-beta cross-frequency correlation during anticipation and recovery, and information processing biases during early processing of faces (P1) and errors (error-related negativity). These electrocortical measures are discussed in relation to the persistent cycle of information processing biases maintaining SAD. Future research should further investigate the mechanisms of this persistent cycle and study the utility of electrocortical measures in early detection, prevention, treatment and endophenotype research.

Effects of the Video-feedback intervention to promote positive parenting and sensitive discipline on mothers’ neural responses to child faces: A randomized controlled ERP study including pre- and post-intervention measures

“…Furthermore, a main effect of BSI score on P1 amplitude was found with higher BSI scores relating to increased P1 amplitudes. The latter finding is consistent with studies reporting attentional biases in people with depression and anxiety symptoms toward enhanced attention to and saliency of socially and emotionally relevant stimuli such as emotional faces (Dai, Wei, Shu, & Feng, 2016;Harrewijn, Schmidt, Westenberg, Tang, & Van, der Molen, 2017). These findings highlight the importance of attending to potential pre-existing differences and confounding factors by including pre-intervention measures and important covariates in statistical analyses.…”

Early and late dot‐probe attentional bias to mild and high threat pictures: Relations with EEG theta/beta ratio, self‐reported trait attentional control, and trait anxiety

“…Measuring the time course of attention remains notoriously difficult (see also Mogg & Bradley, 2016). Different methods such as emotional cueing tasks (Koster et al, 2007), ERP tasks (Harrewijn, Schmidt, Westenberg, Tang, & van der Molen, 2017), or even nonspatial emotional-attention tasks such as interference tasks (Clarke, MacLeod, & Guastella, 2013) or serial presentation tasks (Peers & Lawrence, 2009) might be used in future studies to assess the time course of selective attention, attentional avoidance, and attentional control.…”

An electroencephalographic approach to the processing of ambiguous stimuli under social influence : the role of perception, attention, emotion and metacognition

“…Nevertheless, these effects were similar for both groups of subjects. Thus, the findings are in line with most studies on socially anxious individuals, showing no influence of social anxiety on N170 amplitudes (for a review, see Harrewijn et al, 2017). Instead, these results suggest a bias in the general population towards the encoding of faces expressing agreement.…”

“…Thus, electrocortical measures such as event-related potential (ERPs), thanks to their high temporal resolution, can inform on the temporal unfolding of neural activation in response to socially threatening stimuli. Several ERP studies have explored early attentional processes during the presentation of emotional expressions in highly socially anxious and social phobic individuals (for a review see: Harrewijn, Schmidt, Westenberg, Tang & Van der Molen, 2017). Overall, results indicate that P1, an early positive wave peaking around 100 ms after stimulus presentation (Luck, 2014), is increased in response to emotional faces in socially anxious individuals, suggesting enhanced sensory processing to socially threatening stimuli (e.g.…”