Neurophysiological Risk for Adolescent Social Phobia

National Institute Of Mental Health

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Abstract

Adolescent anxiety disorders are prevalent, markedly impairing, and predictive of high risk for adult anxiety, depression, and suicide. Identifying early childhood predictors of anxiety would allow us to target children most in need of intervention. Although behavioral inhibition is not a psychiatric illness, it predicts high risk for adolescent and adult anxiety, particularly social phobia. As such, early behavioral inhibition is a diathesis for anxiety. Investigating patterns of neural functioning associated with behavioral inhibition and social phobia would demonstrate the degree to which an early-life risk factor and an adolescent disorder share underlying biological correlates, data essential for advancing the assessment and prevention of anxiety. The current proposal capitalizes on a rare opportunity to conduct such integrative work.[unreadable] The central hypothesis for this study is that adolescents with social phobia or with temperamental risk for the disorder share anomalies in striatal function. [unreadable] Aim 1: Confirm differences between adolescents with social phobia and psychiatrically healthy controls in striatal response to salient nonsocial incentives. Based on our initial work associating behavioral inhibition and striatal hyperactivation to nonsocial incentives, we hypothesize that socially phobic adolescents will show greater striatal activation to anticipated nonsocial incentives (e.g., monetary gain or avoidance of monetary loss) vs. no incentive, relative to controls.[unreadable] Aim 2: Establish differences in striatal response to salient social incentives between adolescents with social phobia and controls. We hypothesize that, during an anticipatory period leading up to potential social interactions vs. a baseline, socially phobic adolescents will show increased striatal activation relative to controls. Preliminary data documenting increased striatal activation to anticipated social interactions in adolescents with heterogeneous anxiety disorders vs. controls supports this hypothesis.[unreadable] Aim 3: Identify differences in striatal response to salient social incentives between adolescents with a temperamental risk for social phobia and those without such a risk.