Neural Response to Monetary and Social Feedback Demonstrate Differential Associations with Depression and Social Anxiety

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience ◽

10.1093/scan/nsab055 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Brady D Nelson ◽

Johanna M Jarcho

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Neural Response ◽

Differential Association ◽

Social Feedback ◽

Domain Specific ◽

Reward Positivity ◽

Monetary Rewards ◽

Social Tasks ◽

Positive And Negative Feedback ◽

Trial Structure

Abstract An aberrant neural response to rewards has been linked to both depression and social anxiety. Most studies have focused on the neural response to monetary rewards, and few have tested different modalities of reward (e.g., social) that are more salient to particular forms of psychopathology. In addition, most studies contain critical confounds, including contrasting positive and negative feedback and failing to disentangle being correct from obtaining positive feedback. In the present study, 204 participants underwent electroencephalography during monetary and social feedback tasks that were matched in trial structure, timing, and feedback stimuli. The reward positivity (RewP) was measured in response to correctly identifying stimuli that resulted in monetary win, monetary loss, social like, or social dislike feedback. All monetary and social tasks elicited a RewP, which were positively correlated. Across all tasks, the RewP was negatively associated with depression and positively associated with social anxiety. The RewP to social dislike feedback, independent of monetary and social like feedback, was also associated with social anxiety. The present study suggests that a domain-general neural response to correct feedback demonstrates a differential association with depression and social anxiety, but a domain-specific neural response to social dislike feedback is uniquely associated with social anxiety.

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The malfunction of domain-specific attentional process in social anxiety: attentional process of social and non-social stimuli

Cognition & Emotion ◽

10.1080/02699931.2021.1935217 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-12

Author(s):

Kenta Ishikawa ◽

Takato Oyama ◽

Matia Okubo

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Social Stimuli ◽

Domain Specific ◽

Attentional Process

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Oxytocin-induced facilitation of learning in a probabilistic task is associated with reduced feedback- and error-related negativity potentials

Journal of Psychopharmacology ◽

10.1177/0269881120972347 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 40-49

Author(s):

Qian Zhuang ◽

Siyu Zhu ◽

Xue Yang ◽

Xinqi Zhou ◽

Xiaolei Xu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Negative Feedback ◽

Early Stage ◽

Conflict Detection ◽

Social Feedback ◽

Double Blind ◽

Subsequent Performance ◽

Error Awareness ◽

Error Related Negativity ◽

Positive And Negative Feedback ◽

The Impact

Background: Feedback evaluation of actions and error response detection are critical for optimizing behavioral adaptation. Oxytocin can facilitate learning following social feedback but whether its effects vary as a function of feedback valence remains unclear. Aims: The present study aimed to investigate whether oxytocin would influence responses to positive and negative feedback differentially or equivalently. Methods: The present study employed a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled within-subject design to investigate whether intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) influenced behavioral and evoked electrophysiological potential responses to positive or negative feedback in a probabilistic learning task. Results: Results showed that oxytocin facilitated learning and this effect was maintained in the absence of feedback. Using novel stimulus pairings, we found that oxytocin abolished bias towards learning more from negative feedback under placebo by increasing accuracy for positively reinforced stimuli. Oxytocin also decreased the feedback-related negativity difference (negative minus positive feedback) during learning, further suggesting that it rendered the evaluation of positive and negative feedback more equivalent. Additionally, post-learning oxytocin attenuated error-related negativity amplitudes but increased the late error positivity, suggesting that it may lower conflict detection between actual errors and expected correct responses at an early stage of processing but at a later stage increase error awareness and motivation for avoiding them. Conclusions: Oxytocin facilitates learning and subsequent performance by rendering the impact of positive relative to negative feedback more equivalent and also by reducing conflict detection and increasing error awareness, which may be beneficial for behavioral adaption.

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Higher Social Rejection Sensitivity in Opioid-Dependent Patients Is Related to Smaller Insula Gray Matter Volume: A Voxel-Based Morphometric Study

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience ◽

10.1093/scan/nsz094 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 14 (11) ◽

pp. 1187-1195

Author(s):

Patrick Bach ◽

Ulrich Frischknecht ◽

Svenja Klinkowski ◽

Melanie Bungert ◽

Damian Karl ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Social Phobia ◽

Gray Matter ◽

Gray Matter Volume ◽

Rejection Sensitivity ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Social Rejection ◽

Morphometric Study ◽

Social Feedback ◽

Social Ostracism

Abstract Opioid-dependent patients are highly sensitized to negative social feedback, and increased social rejection sensitivity was linked to adverse treatment outcome, but its neurobiological underpinnings have not been understood yet. The present study investigated gray matter (GM) volume differences between 19 opioid maintenance treatment (OMT) patients and 20 healthy controls using magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry. Associations of GM volumes with subjective feelings of exclusion and inclusion during a social ostracism (Cyberball) paradigm, with rejection sensitivity, social interaction anxiety and social phobia were explored. OMT patients displayed smaller GM volume in the bilateral insula and inferior frontal gyri. Psychometric and task data showed that patients reported significantly higher rejection sensitivity, social anxiety and social phobia scores and felt more excluded and less included during the social ostracism paradigm. Smaller GM volume in the insula was associated with higher subjective exclusion, lower subjective inclusion and higher rejection sensitivity, social anxiety and social phobia scores. Findings indicate that structural deficits in emotion- and anxiety-processing brain regions in OMT patients are associated with increased social rejection sensitivity. As social rejection is a potential trigger for relapse, patients might benefit from therapeutic strategies that promote social integration.

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Early childhood social reticence and neural response to peers in preadolescence predict social anxiety symptoms in midadolescence

Depression and Anxiety ◽

10.1002/da.22910 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 36 (8) ◽

pp. 676-689 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Tessa Clarkson ◽

Nicholas R. Eaton ◽

Eric E. Nelson ◽

Nathan A. Fox ◽

Ellen Leibenluft ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Social Anxiety ◽

Neural Response ◽

Anxiety Symptoms

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Social Feedback Modulates Neural Response Associated With Cognitive Bias in Individuals Expressing Anxious Symptoms

Chronic Stress ◽

10.1177/2470547019848648 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

pp. 247054701984864 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Khalil Thompson ◽

Kendrick King ◽

Eddy Nahmias ◽

Negar Fani ◽

Trevor Kvaran ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Blood Oxygen Level Dependent ◽

Regions Of Interest ◽

Blood Oxygen ◽

Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽

Resonance Imaging ◽

Social Feedback ◽

Blood Oxygen Level ◽

High Anxiety ◽

Anxiety Group

Background Social anxiety is characterized by a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes and consequences before, during, and after interpersonal interactions with social partners. Recent evidence suggests that a network of brain regions critical for perspective-taking, threat appraisal, and uncertainty resolution may function atypically in those prone to social anxiety. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine neural activity in specific regions of interest in a sample of young adults who endorsed high or low levels of social anxiety. Methods We recruited 31 college student volunteers (age: 18–28 years), categorized as having high or low anxiety based on their Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale-Self Report scores. These participants were each scanned while playing the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game with three computerized confederates, two of whom they were deceived to believe were human co-players. This study focuses on data collected during play with the presumed humans. Regions of interest were defined for the temporoparietal junction, anterior midcingulate, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Average weighted mean blood-oxygen-level-dependent signals for each subject were extracted and analyzed using mixed design analyses of variance to detect group differences in activation during decision-making, anticipation, and appraisal of round outcomes during the game. Results Behavior analysis revealed that the high-anxiety group was more likely to defect than the low-anxiety group. Neuroimaging analysis showed that the high-anxiety group exhibited elevated blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity relative to the low-anxiety group in all three regions during the social feedback appraisal phase but not during decision-making or the anticipation of interaction outcomes. Conclusions These findings provide evidence that some behaviors linked to cognitive biases associated with social anxiety may be mediated by a network of regions involved in recognizing and processing directed social information. Future investigation of the neural basis of cognition and bias in social anxiety using the prisoner’s dilemma and other economic-exchange tasks is warranted. These tasks appear to be highly effective, functional magnetic resonance imaging-compatible methods of probing altered cognition and behavior associated with anxiety and related conditions.

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Neural correlates of negative expectancy and impaired social feedback processing in social anxiety

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience ◽

10.1093/scan/nsaa038 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 285-291 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ruolei Gu ◽

Xiang Ao ◽

Licheng Mo ◽

Dandan Zhang

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Cognitive Processing ◽

Social Acceptance ◽

Cognitive Biases ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Control Group ◽

Social Feedback ◽

Feedback Processing ◽

Related Potentials ◽

High Social Anxiety

Abstract Social anxiety has been associated with abnormalities in cognitive processing in the literature, manifesting as various cognitive biases. To what extent these biases interrupt social interactions remains largely unclear. This study used the Social Judgment Paradigm that could separate the expectation and experience stages of social feedback processing. Event-related potentials (ERPs) in these two stages were recorded to detect the effect of social anxiety that might not be reflected by behavioral data. Participants were divided into two groups according to their social anxiety level. Participants in the high social anxiety (HSA) group were more likely to predict that they would be socially rejected by peers than did their low social anxiety (LSA) counterparts (i.e. the control group). Compared to the ERP data of the LSA group, the HSA group showed: (a) a larger P1 component to social cues (peer faces) prior to social feedback presentation, possibly indicating an attention bias; (b) a difference in feedback-related negativity amplitude between unexpected social acceptance and unexpected social rejection, possibly indicating an expectancy bias; and (c) a diminished sensitivity of the P3 amplitude to social feedback valence (be accepted/be rejected), possibly indicating an experience bias. These results could help understand the cognitive mechanisms that comprise and maintain social anxiety.

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The Effects of Video and Nonnegative Social Feedback on Distorted Appraisals of Bodily Sensations and Social Anxiety

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/02.07.09.pr0.109.5.411-427 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 109 (2) ◽

pp. 411-427 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Yoshihiro Kanai ◽

Junwen Chen ◽

Satoko Sasagawa ◽

Yuji Sakano

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Video Feedback ◽

Control Group ◽

Positive Outcomes ◽

Social Feedback ◽

Anticipatory Anxiety ◽

Socially Anxious ◽

Differential Effects ◽

Bodily Sensations ◽

Experimental Group

The effects of video feedback and nonnegative feedback from other people were examined as possibly ameliorating distorted appraisals of bodily sensations, as well as subjective and physiological anxiety in socially anxious individuals. Nonnegative feedback from a confederate emphasized the absence of negative outcomes (e.g., did not seem to tremble) rather than the presence of positive outcomes (e.g., looked calm). Socially anxious students were randomly assigned to either the experimental group, which received video and social feedback ( n = 12), or the control group ( n = 13). Participants were asked to give a videotaped speech twice. After the first speech, the experimental group watched the videotape of their speech and received feedback from a confederate, whereas the control group watched the video of another person's speech. The intervention improved distorted appraisal of bodily sensations and anticipatory anxiety for the experimental group. However, there were no differential effects on anxiety between the groups during speeches.

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Examining self-verification processes in social anxiety

The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist ◽

10.1017/s1754470x15000070 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Mitchell P. A. Howarth ◽

Miriam Forbes

Keyword(s):

Social Anxiety ◽

Negative Feedback ◽

Positive Feedback ◽

Negative Evaluation ◽

Fear Of Negative Evaluation ◽

Socially Anxious ◽

Negative Beliefs ◽

Positive And Negative Feedback

AbstractSocially anxious individuals hold negative beliefs about their appearance, abilities and personality. These negative self-conceptions increase expectations of negative evaluation from others and, consequently increase anxiety. Self-verification theory states that individuals seek, accept and prefer feedback that is congruent with their self-conceptions. This study explored the assumptions of self-verification theory in social anxiety. This was achieved by examining the type of feedback socially anxious individuals seek and how positive and negative feedback is processed. Results from an undergraduate sample (n = 84) indicate that socially anxious individuals were no more or less likely to seek negative feedback than individuals with low social anxiety. However, participants with greater social anxiety rated positive feedback as less accurate, rated negative feedback as more accurate, and were more comfortable with negative feedback, compared to participants with low social anxiety. Greater social anxiety was also found to predict increased discomfort with positive feedback, and fear of negative evaluation fully mediated this relationship. These findings suggest that self-verification processes operate in social anxiety and highlight the need for researchers to include measures of fears of evaluation when examining self-verification theory in samples of socially anxious individuals.

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