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. 2015 Jan 5:8:439.
doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00439. eCollection 2014.

Neural sensitivity to social reward and punishment anticipation in social anxiety disorder

Henk R Cremers  1 , Ilya M Veer  2 , Philip Spinhoven  3 , Serge A R B Rombouts  4 , Karin Roelofs  5
Affiliations

Neural sensitivity to social reward and punishment anticipation in social anxiety disorder

Henk R Cremers et al. Front Behav Neurosci. .

Abstract

An imbalance in the neural motivational system may underlie Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). This study examines social reward and punishment anticipation in SAD, predicting a valence-specific effect: increased striatal activity for punishment avoidance compared to obtaining a reward. Individuals with SAD (n = 20) and age, gender, and education case-matched controls (n = 20) participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. During fMRI scanning, participants performed a Social Incentive Delay (SID) task to measure the anticipation of social reward and punishment. The left putamen (part of the striatum) showed a valence-specific interaction with group after correcting for medication use and comorbidity. The control group showed a relatively stronger activation for reward vs. punishment trials, compared to the social anxiety group. However, post-hoc pairwise comparisons were not significant, indicating that the effect is driven by a relative difference. A connectivity analysis (Psychophysiological interaction) further revealed a general salience effect: SAD patients showed decreased putamen-ACC connectivity compared to controls for both reward and punishment trials. Together these results suggest that the usual motivational preference for social reward is absent in SAD. In addition, cortical control processes during social incentive anticipation may be disrupted in SAD. These results provide initial evidence for altered striatal involvement in both valence-specific and valence-nonspecific processing of social incentives, and stress the relevance of taking motivational processes into account when studying social anxiety.

Keywords: fMRI; punishment; reward; social anxiety disorder; social incentives.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Social incentive delay task. Upper panel: on each trial, a cue of (500 ms) (indicating the condition) is followed by a delay period (1500–3500 ms) after which a target is presented (150–500 ms). When the target is shown, participants are instructed to press a button as fast as possible. Depending on whether the reaction time is fast enough, one of two possible feedback screens appear (1650 ms). Lower panel: the different conditions with the associated feedback (outcome).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Brain activation during anticipation in the left putamen region of interest. Parameter estimates per group and condition compared to baseline. Left side of the image is right side of the brain. Error bars are standard error of the mean.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Brain connectivity between left putamen and dACC during the anticipation of reward, neutral and punishment trials. Parameter estimates per group and condition compared to baseline. Left side of the image is right side of the brain. Error bars are standard error of the mean. *significant post-hoc effect, p < 0.05.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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