Neural correlates of emotional interference in social anxiety disorder

Böhme S, Ritter V, Tefikow S, Stangier U, Strauss B, Miltner WHR, Straube T (2015)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2015

Journal

PLoS ONE Public Library of Science

Book Volume: 10

Article Number: e0128608

Journal Issue: 6

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128608

Abstract

Disorder-relevant but task-unrelated stimuli impair cognitive performance in social anxiety disorder (SAD); however, time course and neural correlates of emotional interference are unknown. The present study investigated time course and neural basis of emotional interference in SAD using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Patients with SAD and healthy controls performed an emotional stroop task which allowed examining interference effects on the current and the succeeding trial. Reaction time data showed an emotional interference effect in the current trial, but not the succeeding trial, specifically in SAD. FMRI data showed greater activation in the left amygdala, bilateral insula, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and left opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus during emotional interference of the current trial in SAD patients. Furthermore, we found a positive correlation between patients' interference scores and activation in the mPFC, dorsal ACC and left angular/supramarginal gyrus. Taken together, results indicate a network of brain regions comprising amygdala, insula, mPFC, ACC, and areas strongly involved in language processing during the processing of task-unrelated threat in SAD. However, specifically the activation in mPFC, dorsal ACC, and left angular/supramarginal gyrus is associated with the strength of the interference effect, suggesting a cognitive network model of attentional bias in SAD. This probably comprises exceeded allocation of attentional resources to disorder-related information of the presented stimuli and increased self-referential and semantic processing of threat words in SAD.

Authors with CRIS profile

Stephanie Böhme

Involved external institutions

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main DE Germany (DE) Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität (WWU) Münster DE Germany (DE) Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena DE Germany (DE) Universitätsklinikum Würzburg DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Böhme, S., Ritter, V., Tefikow, S., Stangier, U., Strauss, B., Miltner, W.H.R., & Straube, T. (2015). Neural correlates of emotional interference in social anxiety disorder. PLoS ONE, 10(6). https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0128608

MLA:

Böhme, Stephanie, et al. "Neural correlates of emotional interference in social anxiety disorder." PLoS ONE 10.6 (2015).

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