Abstract
BackgroundSocial anxiety has been associated with potentiated negative affect and, more recently, with diminished positive affect. It is unclear how these alterations in negative and positive affect are represented neurally in socially anxious individuals and, further, whether they generalize to non-social stimuli. To explore this, we used a monetary incentive paradigm to explore the association between social anxiety and both the anticipation and consumption of non-social incentives. Eighty-four individuals from a longitudinal community sample underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participating in a monetary incentive delay (MID) task. The MID task consisted of alternating cues indicating the potential to win or prevent losing varying amounts of money based on the speed of the participant’s response. We examined whether self-reported levels of social anxiety, averaged across approximately 7 years of data, moderated brain activity when contrasting gain or loss cues with neutral cues during the anticipation and outcome phases of incentive processing. Whole brain analyses and analyses restricted to the ventral striatum for the anticipation phase and the medial prefrontal cortex for the outcome phase were conducted.ResultsSocial anxiety did not associate with differences in hit rates or reaction times when responding to cues. Further, socially anxious individuals did not exhibit decreased ventral striatum activity during anticipation of gains or decreased MPFC activity during the outcome of gain trials, contrary to expectations based on literature indicating blunted positive affect in social anxiety. Instead, social anxiety showed positive associations with extensive regions implicated in default mode network activity (for example, precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, and parietal lobe) during anticipation and receipt of monetary gain. Social anxiety was further linked with decreased activity in the ventral striatum during anticipation of monetary loss.ConclusionsSocially anxious individuals may increase default mode network activity during reward processing, suggesting high self-focused attention even in relation to potentially rewarding stimuli lacking explicit social connotations. Additionally, social anxiety may relate to decreased ventral striatum reactivity when anticipating potential losses.
Highlights
Social anxiety has been associated with potentiated negative affect and, more recently, with diminished positive affect
To further describe interactions between social anxiety and ventral striatum or medial prefrontal cortices (MPFC) activity, we examined complementary models for both the anticipation and outcome phases: one with both social and trait anxiety scores entered as covariates and three including each of the social anxiety subscales
In sum, we found that higher levels of social anxiety were associated with increased activity in default mode network areas during anticipation and receipt of reward
Summary
Social anxiety has been associated with potentiated negative affect and, more recently, with diminished positive affect. A stable, higher-order temperamental factor, negative affect encompasses a broad range of distressing emotions, including guilt, hostility, self-dissatisfaction, nervousness, and uneasiness [1,2], that motivate individuals to avoid punishing, threatening, or unfamiliar stimuli [3,4,5]. This manifests in risk-averse behaviors such as withdrawal and inhibition of behavioral impulses, in the presence of approach/ avoidance conflicts [5,6]. Blunted positive emotionality presents as reduced reward-seeking behavior, as well as reduced appetitive and consummatory responses to rewarding stimuli, which characterizes the anhedonia that frequently accompanies depression [18,19]
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