fMRI Study of Social Anxiety during Social Ostracism with and without Emotional Support

Abstract

Social anxiety is characterized by an excessive fear of being embarrassed in social interactions or social performance situations. Emotional support can help to decrease or diminish social distress. Such support may play an important role at different points of social interaction. However, it is unclear how the beneficial effects of social support are represented in the brains of socially anxious individuals. To explore this, we used the same paradigm previously used to examine the effects of emotional support on social pain caused by exclusion. Undergraduates (n = 46) showing a wide range of social anxiety scores underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participating in a Cyberball game. Participants were initially included and later excluded from the game. In the latter half of the session in which participants were excluded, they were provided with supportive messages. In line with our previous work, we found that social exclusion led to increased anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity, whereas emotional support led to increased left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) activity. Despite validation of the paradigm, social anxiety was not associated with increased ACC activity during social exclusion, or during perceived emotional support. Instead, fear of negative evaluation as assessed by the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation (BFNE) scale showed positive associations with left DLPFC activation while receiving emotional support, compared to while being socially excluded. The more socially anxious an individual was, the greater was the left DLPFC activity increased during receipt of messages. This suggests that highly socially anxious people still have the ability to perceive social support, but that they are nevertheless susceptible to negative evaluation by others.

Why don't you like me? Midfrontal theta power in response to unexpected peer rejection feedback

“…Our current theta power results match previous observations of a significant slowing of heart rate when participants were unexpectedly rejected by their peers in the SJP (Dekkers EEG oscillatory dynamics of social rejection 20 et al., 2015;Gunther Moor et al, 2010;Van der Veen et al, 2014). This significant slowing of heart rate was interpreted to reflect an 'autonomic signature' of processing social rejection, and a manifestation of a neural network involved in the processing of expectancy violations, which is assumed to subsequently potentiate perceptual responsiveness making a potentially threatening cue more salient (e.g., Markovic, Anderson, & Todd, 2014).…”

Ostracism via virtual chat room—Effects on basic needs, anger and pain

“…An interesting approach would be to study the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex (VLPFC) and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) during virtual social interactions. Based on Riva and colleagues’ [ 27 ] findings of effective attenuation of ostracism’s effects on basic needs, and neuroimaging findings of Nishiyama, Okamoto [ 28 ] and Onoda, Okamoto [ 29 ] on the correlations of DLPFC activation with lower post ostracism effects, we believe that both these frontal areas could differently modulate the consequences of ostracism and thus help participants suffering from ostracism to react in a more survival-oriented way by boosting and speeding up the second stage of the Temporal Need Threat Model of Ostracism [ 10 ]–coping. This could potentially allow ostracized individuals to have increased scores on self-esteem, meaningful existence, belonging and control to the level of participants included in the chat room.…”

Neural correlates of social exclusion across ages: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional MRI studies

“…This task, first used in the MRI scanner by Eisenberger and colleagues (2003) to examine the neural correlates of social exclusion in a convenience sample of undergraduates, has since been used to study neural responses to social exclusion in clinical populations, including autism (Bolling et al, 2011b; Masten et al, 2011a), depression (Groschwitz et al, 2016), alcohol dependence (Maurage et al, 2012), and schizophrenia (Gradin et al, 2012). Within non-clinical samples, researchers have examined individual differences in neural responses to social exclusion, including the effect of social support (Nishiyama et al, 2015; Onoda et al, 2009), attachment style (DeWall et al, 2012), and rejection sensitivity (Masten et al, 2013), to name a few examples. The paradigm has also been modified to compare neural responses to differing forms of rejection (i.e.…”