Psychophysiological evidence for cortisol-induced reduction in early bias for implicit social threat in social phobia

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

“…This finding suggests that strong delta-beta coupling may either reflect reduced stimulusdriven anxious attentional reflex, or enhanced top-down attentional control over such automatic bottom-up responses to threat. This conjecture is supported by findings from van Peer et al (2008) that cortisol administration (which seems to increase attentional control over automatic attentional processing of task-irrelevant affective information; e.g., Oei et al, 2009;van Peer et al, 2010) acutely increased delta-beta coupling.…”

Resting state EEG delta–beta coherence in relation to anxiety, behavioral inhibition, and selective attentional processing of threatening stimuli

“…Van Peer et al (2008) reported that a single administration of 50 mg of the hormone cortisol increased δ-β coherence in low and high BIS males. A number of recent studies have suggested that such single administrations of comparable dosages of cortisol reduce biased attentional processing of task-irrelevant threatening visual stimuli (Oei et al, 2009;Putman et al, 2007Putman et al, , 2010bvan Peer et al, 2010) and fearful response to very stressful situations (Het and Wolf, 2007;Soravia et al, 2006;Vasa et al, 2009). These effects have been ascribed to modulation of prefrontal cortical function via cortisol's effect on prefrontally located glucocorticoid receptors and cortisol's upregulation of dopaminergic activation of prefrontal cortical structures involved in executive cognitive functions (Oei et al, 2009;Putman et al, 2010b).…”

The Impact of Top-Down Prediction on Emotional Face Processing in Social Anxiety

“…An increasing number of studies have explored how SAD modulates the P200 (Kolassa and Miltner, 2006; van Peer et al, 2010; Gardener et al, 2013). For example, van Peer et al (2010) reported a specific increase in P200 amplitude to threat faces in SAD individuals, reflecting an attentional bias for social threat. Moreover, a recent study observed a correlation between P200 amplitude in response to self-focus cues and reduced task performance in individuals with SAD (Judah et al, 2015).…”