The neural mechanism of social reward and punishment anticipation in social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety Disorder (SAD) is characterised by persistent fear of social
interaction and social evaluation. While brain research so far has focussed
mainly on the processing of emotional stimuli, the neural basis of other
crucial cognitive processes remains unclear. In this project the focus will on
brain activity and connectivity during the anticipation of social evalutation
measured with two different experimental manipulations. First participants will
perform an social reward and punishment paradigm. It is expected that SAD
patients will show greater sensitivity to social punishment, this sensitivity
is hypothesized to be reflected by alterations of nucleus accumbens activity.
The second focus will be on the anticipation of social evaluation in, in the
form of preparing a presentation in the scanner. For this aim we will apply
resting state scans before and after the instruction to give a free speech.
Here it is to be expected that SAD patients will shower greater arousal,
accompanied by amygdala activity and connectivity related to larger
anticipatory anxiety.

This aim of this study is to investigate the neural mechanisms of the
anticipation of a social evaluation during task induced brain activity, and
secondly during the anticipation of a public speech.

Static group comparison design: SAD patients compared to healthy control
participants.

Participants will be tested in an MRI scanner, which can be of some discomfort
because of load noise and the instruction to move as little as possible.
Especially SAD patients might experience some psychological distress after the
social interaction and arithmetic task. It should be noted however that these
procedures have been applied elsewhere repeatedly, and long-term risk are
negligible. This project will not be of direct benefit to the SAD patients, but
will be of importance in the understanding of the neural basis of dysfunctional
social behaviour In SAD.