Adolescent social anxiety undermines adolescent-parent interbrain synchrony during emotional processing: A hyperscanning study

Abstract

Social anxiety severely impacts adolescents’ social interactions with others; however, the underlying neural mechanism has not been revealed. This study examined how adolescent's social anxiety level influences the interbrain synchrony within adolescent-parent dyads during emotional processing by using electroencephalograph (EEG) hyperscanning. A sample of 25 adolescent-parent dyads completed the picture processing task. Adolescents’ ages ranged from 10 to 14 years old. The results showed that (1) at parietal areas, greater gamma interbrain synchrony was observed in the high social anxiety adolescent-parent dyads (HSAs) than the low social anxiety adolescent-parent dyads (LSAs) in the positive conditions. However, greater gamma interbrain synchrony of the picture processing task was observed in the LSAs than the HSAs in the negative conditions. (2) Compared with the neutral condition, LSAs induced greater interbrain synchronization in the negative condition than in the neutral condition at central and parietal areas. However, HSAs induced greater interbrain synchronization in the positive condition than in the negative condition at parietal areas. (3) HSAs induced greater interbrain synchronization at parietal areas than in the central areas in positive conditions. The results provide neurological evidence that the way parent and adolescent process different emotions in the same emotional episode could be affected by the adolescent's anxiety level.