Error-related brain activity in youth and young adults before and after treatment for generalized or social anxiety disorder

Background: Research to date has focused on the detrimental effects of negative self-images for individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD), but the benefits of positive self-images have been neglected. Aims: The present study examined the effect of holding a positive versus negative self-image in mind on anxiety, judgement bias and emotion regulation (ER) in individuals with SAD. Method: Forty-two individuals who met the diagnostic criteria for SAD were randomly assigned to either a positive or a negative self-image group. Participants were assessed twice with a week's interval in between using the Reactivity and Regulation Situation Task, which measures social anxiety, discomfort, judgement bias and ER, prior to and after the inducement of a positive or negative self-image. Results: Individuals in the positive self-image group reported less social anxiety, discomfort and distress from social cost when compared with their pre-induction state. They also used more adaptive ER strategies and experienced less anxiety and discomfort after using ER. In contrast, individuals in the negative self-image group showed no significant differences in anxiety, judgement bias or ER strategies before and after the induction. Conclusions: This study highlights the beneficial effects of positive self-images on social anxiety and ER.

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The Effects of Virtual Reality Treatment on Prefrontal Cortex Activity in Patients With Social Anxiety Disorder: Participatory and Interactive Virtual Reality Treatment Study (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.31844 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hojun Lee ◽

JongKwan Choi ◽

Dooyoung Jung ◽

Ji-Won Hur ◽

Chul-Hyun Cho

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Prefrontal Cortex ◽

Anxiety Disorder ◽

Social Anxiety ◽

Psychiatric Disorders ◽

Social Anxiety Disorder ◽

Cognitive Task ◽

Neural Correlates ◽

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽

Before And After

BACKGROUND Attempts to use virtual reality (VR) as a treatment for various psychiatric disorders have been made recently, and many researchers have identified the effects of VR in psychiatric disorders. Studies have reported that VR therapy is effective in social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, there is no prior study on the neural correlates of VR therapy in patients with SAD. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to find the neural correlates of VR therapy by evaluating the treatment effectiveness of VR in patients with SAD using portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). METHODS Patients with SAD (n=28) were provided with 6 sessions of VR treatment that was developed for exposure to social situations with a recording system of each participant’s self-introduction in VR. After each VR treatment session, the first-person view (video 1) and third-person view (video 2) clips of the participant’s self-introduction were automatically generated. The functional activities of prefrontal regions were measured by fNIRS while watching videos 1 and 2 with a cognitive task, before and after whole VR treatment sessions, and after the first session of VR treatment. We compared the data of fNIRS between patients with SAD and healthy controls (HCs; n=27). RESULTS We found that reduction in activities of the right frontopolar prefrontal cortex (FPPFC) in HCs was greater than in the SAD group at baseline (t=–2.01, P=.049). Comparing the frontal cortex activation before and after VR treatment sessions in the SAD group showed significant differences in activities of the FPPFC (right: t=–2.93, P<.001; left: t=–2.25, P=.03) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) (right: t=–2.10, P=.045; left: t=–2.21, P=.04) while watching video 2. CONCLUSIONS Activities of the FPPFC and OFC were associated with symptom reduction after VR treatment for SAD. Our study findings might provide a clue to understanding the mechanisms underlying VR treatment for SAD. CLINICALTRIAL Clinical Research Information Service (CRIS) KCT0003854; https://tinyurl.com/559jp2kp

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The Study of Face Processing in Social Anxiety Disorder Based on Face-Specific N170 Component

Journal of Healthcare Engineering ◽

10.1155/2022/6003973 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 2022 ◽

pp. 1-10

Author(s):

Xuejing Bi ◽

Min Guo ◽

Jianqin Cao ◽

Yanhua Hao

Keyword(s):

Anxiety Disorder ◽

Social Anxiety ◽

Social Anxiety Disorder ◽

Face Processing ◽

Right Hemisphere ◽

Asymmetry Index ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

N170 Component ◽

Before And After ◽

The Right

Although previous studies showed that social anxiety disorder (SAD) exhibits the attentional bias for angry faces, few studies investigated effective face recognition combined with event-related potential (ERP) technique in SAD patients, especially the treatment effect. This study examines the differences in face processing in SAD patients before and after treatment and healthy control people (H-group). High-density EEG scans were registered in response to emotional schematic faces, particularly interested in the face processing N170 component. Analysis of N170 amplitude revealed a larger N170 for P-group-pre in response to inverted and upright stimuli than H-group in the right hemisphere. The result of the intragroup t-test showed that N170 was delayed for inverted relative to upright faces only in P-group-post and H-group but not in P-group-pre. Remarkably, the results of ANOVAs manifested that emotional expression cannot modulate N170 for SAD patients. Besides, the N170-based asymmetry index (AI) was introduced to analyze the left- and right-hemisphere dominance of N170 for three groups. It was found that, with the improvement of patients’ treatment, the value of A I N 170 − b a s e d presented a decreasing trend. These results together suggested that there was no inversion effect observed for patients with SAD. The change in the value of A I N 170 − b a s e d can be used as potential electrophysiological markers for the diagnosis and treatment effects on patients with SAD.

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