Tuned to voices and faces: Cerebral responses linked to social anxiety

Kreifelts, Benjamin; Eckstein, Kathrin N.; Ethofer, Thomas; Wiegand, Ariane; Wächter, Sarah; Brück, Carolin; Erb, Michael; Lotze, Martín; Wildgruber, Dirk

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.05.018

Cited by 10 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Our results are in line with studies suggesting that pSTS serves as an interface between perception of social information and social cognition 92 . pSTS plays a role in analysing socially relevant perceptual information (eye gaze, tone of voice, facial and bodily threat signals), evaluating its implications and orienting and sustaining attention accordingly, in line with the individual's present affective state and social goals 93 .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Brain structure correlates of expected social threat and reward

Crawford

Muhlert

MacDonald

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Prospection (mentally simulating future events) generates emotionally-charged mental images that guide social decision-making. Positive and negative social expectancies—imagining new social interactions to be rewarding versus threatening—are core components of social approach and avoidance motivation, respectively. Interindividual differences in such positive and negative future-related cognitions may be underpinned by distinct neuroanatomical substrates. Here, we asked 100 healthy adults to vividly imagine themselves in a novel self-relevant event that was ambiguous with regards to possible social acceptance or rejection. During this task we measured participants’ expectancies for social reward (anticipated feelings of social connection) or threat (anticipated feelings of rejection). On a separate day they underwent structural MRI; voxel-based morphometry was used to explore the relation between social reward and threat expectancies and regional grey matter volumes (rGMV). Increased rGMV in key default-network regions involved in prospection, socio-emotional cognition, and subjective valuation, including ventromedial prefrontal cortex, correlated with both higher social reward and lower social threat expectancies. In contrast, social threat expectancies uniquely correlated with rGMV of regions involved in social attention (posterior superior temporal sulcus, pSTS) and interoception (somatosensory cortex). These findings provide novel insight into the neurobiology of future-oriented cognitive-affective processes critical to adaptive social functioning.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Brain structure correlates of expected social threat and reward

Crawford

Muhlert

MacDonald

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…(34)]. Further, our results extend findings from a recent fMRI study demonstrating that increased hemodynamic responses in SAD occur within the STS not only for unimodal faces in the face-sensitive area of the pSTS but also for unimodal voices in the TVA (11). Moreover, as the site of increased face-voice-integration correlates corresponds well with the posterior maximum of the TVA slightly medial of area TE3 in the temporal cortex (32), increased extraction of meaningful patterns from the voice (35,36) in the context of congruent face cues in SAD may provide an explanation for the activation increase.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…From the clinical perspective, our results suggest that SADrelated cerebral alterations in social cognition exceed the domains of unimodal social cue processing as previously demonstrated for faces (11,34) and voices (11), and also encompass the process of multimodal integration of these signals. This finding not only corroborates the assumption of a broader alteration in social cognition (34) but may also be helpful for a deeper understanding of the cerebral underpinnings of SAD pathogenesis and might bear implications of novel therapeutic approaches.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

The Neural Correlates of Face-Voice-Integration in Social Anxiety Disorder

et al. 2020

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Faces and voices are very important sources of threat in social anxiety disorder (SAD), a common psychiatric disorder where core elements are fears of social exclusion and negative evaluation. Previous research in social anxiety evidenced increased cerebral responses to negative facial or vocal expressions and also generally increased hemodynamic responses to voices and faces. But it is unclear if also the cerebral process of face-voice-integration is altered in SAD. Applying functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the correlates of the audiovisual integration of dynamic faces and voices in SAD as compared to healthy individuals. In the bilateral midsections of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) increased integration effects in SAD were observed driven by greater activation increases during audiovisual stimulation as compared to auditory stimulation. This effect was accompanied by increased functional connectivity with the visual association cortex and a more anterior position of the individual integration maxima along the STS in SAD. These findings demonstrate that the audiovisual integration of facial and vocal cues in SAD is not only systematically altered with regard to intensity and connectivity but also the individual location of the integration areas within the STS. These combined findings offer a novel perspective on the neuronal representation of social signal processing in individuals suffering from SAD.

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“…[154][155][156][157][158][159] Further, resting amygdala-pSTS functional connectivity has been linked to biased social attention and perception in social anxiety. 146,160 Collectively, this work suggests that chronic hypervigilance for threat may result from, or result in, increased rGMV in right pSTS. Increased expectancies of threat when anticipating future situations may be fundamentally underpinned by these attentional biases.…”

Section: Vbm Findings -Correlations With Social Threat Expectanciesmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…145 Our results are in line with studies suggesting that pSTS serves as an interface between perception of social information and social cognition. [146][147][148] pSTS plays a role in analysing socially relevant perceptual information (eye gaze, tone of voice, facial and bodily threat signals), evaluating its implications and orienting attention accordingly, in line with the individual's present affective state and social goals. [149][150][151] pSTS rGMV is increased in SAD and shyness (e.g.…”

Section: Vbm Findings -Correlations With Social Threat Expectanciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences in social reward and threat expectancies linked to grey matter volumes in key regions of the social brain

Crawford¹,

Muhlert²,

MacDonald³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Prospection (mentally simulating future events) generates emotionally charged mental images that guide social decision-making. Positive and negative social expectancies -imagining new social interactions to be rewarding vs. threatening -are core components of social approach and avoidance motivation, respectively. Stable individual differences in such positive and negative future-related cognitions may be underpinned by distinct neuroanatomical substrates. Here, we asked 100 healthy adults to vividly imagine themselves in a novel selfrelevant social scenario that was ambiguous with regards to possible social acceptance or rejection. During this task we measured their expectancies for social reward (e.g. anticipated feelings of social connection) or threat (e.g. anticipated feelings of rejection). On a separate day they underwent structural MRI; voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to explore the relation between their social reward and threat expectancies and regional grey matter volumes (rGMV). Increased rGMV in key regions involved in prospection, subjective valuation and emotion regulation (including ventromedial prefrontal cortex), correlated with both higher social reward and lower social threat expectancies. In contrast, social threat expectancies were uniquely linked with rGMV of regions involved in social attention (posterior superior temporal sulcus) and interoception (somatosensory cortex). These findings provide novel insight into the neurobiology of future-oriented cognitiveaffective processes critical to adaptive social functioning.

show abstract

Tuned to voices and faces: Cerebral responses linked to social anxiety

Cited by 10 publications

References 50 publications

Brain structure correlates of expected social threat and reward

Brain structure correlates of expected social threat and reward

The Neural Correlates of Face-Voice-Integration in Social Anxiety Disorder

Individual differences in social reward and threat expectancies linked to grey matter volumes in key regions of the social brain

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