Increased Amygdala Activation to Angry and Contemptuous Faces in Generalized Social Phobia

Abstract

These findings are consistent with a role for differential amygdala (and associated limbic) functioning in GSP. The pronounced response to contemptuous and angry facial expressions suggests that the amygdala in GSP may be particularly active in the processing of disorder-salient stimuli.

“Avoiding or approaching eyes”? Introversion/extraversion affects the gaze-cueing effect

“…Otherwise, other gaze could -of fearful expressions, or could be even reassuring, as in the case of averted gaze combined with happy and neutral expressions. The present data strictly fit evidence on social phobia (Horley et al 2004;Moukheiber et al 2010;Stein et al 2002) and are consistent with the self-relevance may represent a powerful signal of danger for introverts individuals, they would (likely implicitly) try to avoid interaction with eye gaze in the attempt to reduce threatrelated overarousal, but only when gaze is combined with angry expressions. On the contrary, introverts are encouraged in eye contact expressions.…”

“…Provided that introversion is related to high levels of arousal to social signals (Eysenck 1967), and consistent with evidence on social phobia (Horley et al 2004;Moukheiber et al 2010;Stein et al 2002), we expected that introverts would not show the gaze congruency effect in presence of threatening, and in particular angry, facial stimuli relative to non-threatening (happy and neutral) expressions. Importantly, since previous research showed that the gaze-cueing effect with emotional expressions can interact with trait anxiety (Frischen et al 2007;Fox et al 2007;Mathews et al 2003), in the present experiment we also assessed self-reported levels of trait anxiety to explore the possible relationships between anxiety and intro-/extraversion in modulation of the gaze-cueing effect.…”

“…Subjects with social phobia too are inclined to avoid eye region when scanning faces (Horley et al 2003), likely to reduce exaggerated emotional responsiveness to social stimuli. Similarly to autistic children, social phobics show increased amygdala activation when viewing angry faces (Stein et al 2002). In particular, individuals with social phobia show overarousal when processing threat-related emotional faces, as demonstrated by both hyperscanning of face stimuli (hypervigilance) and reduced eye fixation (eyes avoidance) (Horley et al 2004;Moukheiber et al 2010), but as far as we know this clinical population has not been investigated on the emotional gaze-cueing paradigm.…”

Abnormal Fear Conditioning and Amygdala Processing in an Animal Model of Autism

“…The presented data also supports the view that enhanced, rather than weak amygdala function may be part of the pathology in autism. In accordance with these hypotheses are the findings that a hyperreactive amygdala has been associated with social phobia (Stein et al, 2002;Tillfors, 2004), whereas enhanced sociability as encountered in Williams syndrome, is associated with a hyporesponsive amygdala (Meyer-Lindenberg et al, 2005). A recent study screening for autism-like symptoms in children with mood and anxiety disorders also found that up to 62% of these children fall into the autistic spectrum and might qualify for a possible diagnosis of autism (Towbin et al, 2005).…”

Neurocognitive elements of antisocial behavior: Relevance of an orbitofrontal cortex account

“…Psychopaths, however, also show lack of fear (Herpertz et al, 2001). In contrast, individuals suffering from social phobia show increased amygdala activation (Stein, Goldin, Sareen, Zorilla, & Brown, 2002). Because amygdala deficits may be developmental in psychopaths, their lack of experience in fear recognition may reduce their ability to appraise cues for fear (see Blair this issue).…”