Preliminary Findings: Neural Responses to Feedback Regarding Betrayal and Cooperation in Adolescent Anxiety Disorders

Abstract

This study examined patterns of neural response to feedback received during simulated interpersonal interactions in adolescents with anxiety disorders and healthy peers. To this aim, behavioral and neural responses during the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game, an economic exchange task, were compared between adolescents with anxiety disorders (N=12) and healthy controls (n=17). Participants were deceived to believe that their co-player (a pre-programmed computer algorithm) was another study participant. Anxious participants and controls differed significantly in patterns of neural activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), ACC, precuneus, insula, and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) when receiving feedback about co-player defection or cooperation. Groups also differed significantly in post-feedback behavior; specifically anxious adolescents were more likely than controls to cooperate following trials when the coplayer betrayed them. Our findings provide preliminary evidence that, in social situations, anxious adolescents may not only behave differently than healthy peers, but they may also engage neural resources in different ways. These findings constitute a first step toward elucidating mechanisms underlying social impairment in youth with internalizing disorders. Keywords fMRI; anxiety; depression; cooperation; betrayal; interpersonal interaction; Prisoner's Dilemma; medial prefrontal cortex; precuneus; temporoparietal junction Individuals with social fears show atypical cognitive and emotional responses to social signals, particularly when they interpret those signals as cues of negative or ambiguous interpersonal feedback. For example, they exhibit both a bias to over-attend to interpersonal threat cues such as angry faces and a hypersensitivity to criticism or rejection (Harb, Heimberg, Fresco, Schneier, & Liebowitz, 2002;Mogg, Bradley, Millar, & White, 1995;Mogg, Philippot, & Bradley, 2004). Such cognitive/emotional manifestations of anxiety, which increase risk for maladaptive behaviors including withdrawal, passivity, and avoidance (London, Downey, Bonica, & Paltin, 2007;Schneider, 2009), may relate to aberrant patterns of neural function (Cannistraro & Rauch, 2003 (Goldin, Manber, Hakimi, Canli, & Gross, 2009;Killgore & Yurgelun-Todd, 2005;McClure, Monk, et al., 2007;Monk, et al., 2008;Shin, et al., 2005;Stein, Goldin, Sareen, Zorrilla, & Brown, 2002;Stein, Simmons, Feinstein, & Paulus, 2007). Findings from at least two recent studies of anxiety-disordered adults and adolescents also document perturbations in these regions when negative social cues appear in more complex, self-relevant contexts (e.g., faces or words explicitly conveying critical or rejecting feedback to the participant) (Blair, et al., 2008;Guyer, et al., 2008).Notably, although the two studies that compared neural responses to self-relevant negative social cues between anxious individuals and controls focused primarily on the amygdala and prefrontal cortical regions (Blair, et al., 2008;Guyer, et al., 2008), both yielded evid...

Psychopathic Traits and Social Cooperation in the Context of Emotional Feedback

“…The data further suggest that this association may be somewhat specific to features of depression, with no such effects seen for the anxiety or stress subscales of the DASS-21. Support for this interpretation can be seen in a recent study by the same researchers (McClure et al, 2011) who were unable to replicate this effect in a sample of exclusively anxious adolescents. This finding suggests an interesting avenue for future research into the dynamics of social behaviour among individuals with mood disorders.…”

“…First, in order to maximise ecological validity, participants were told that they were playing an online game with another participant, however, we did not include a manipulation check to assess whether this deception was successful. It should be noted, however, that this omission is shared by previous studies that have examined individual differences associated with performance on the IPD (e.g., Rilling et al, 2007), and there is evidence that participants do not systematically differ in game-play on the IPD as a function of whether they believe the deception (e.g., McClure et al, 2011). Second, in order to maximise statistical power a within-subjects design was used wherein each participant completed both conditions of the IPD task (standard condition followed by affective feedback condition).…”

A novel V1a receptor antagonist blocks vasopressin-induced changes in the CNS response to emotional stimuli: an fMRI study

“…The TPJ is involved in cognitive processes such as theory of mind and psychological perspective taking (Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003; Decety and Grezes, 2006) that play a fundamental role in human social interactive behavior. Hyperactivity has been noted in this region in anxious patients during negative social interactions (McClure-Tone et al, 2011) and altered function is considered a potential mechanism in disorders such as autism (Kana et al, 2012). Given that the TPJ is responsive to the emotional, social, and moral aspects (Kret et al, 2011; Koster-Hale et al, 2013) of stimuli involving social interaction, stress-related over-mentalizing during negative social interactions, mediated in part through the TPJ, may be a psychopathological mechanism amenable to treatment with AVPR1a antagonists.…”

Neuroanatomic Abnormalities in Adolescents With Generalized Anxiety Disorder: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study

“…Taken together, these studies have demonstrated increased amygdala activity, [11,12] increased ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) activity, [12,13] and increased activity within the anterior cingulate cortex. [14] Specifically, in pediatric patients with GAD, dysfunction within the anterior limbic network (ALN), a collection of subcortical and cortical structures involved in the modulation and expression of complex affective states has frequently been noted. [12,[15][16][17][18] Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, for instance, have demonstrated abnormal activation of the amygdala [12,17] and VLPFC, [12,13,16,19] and more recently, several studies have demonstrated altered functional connectivity among these structures.…”