Clinic for General and Social Psychiatry, Psychiatric University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland.
J Psychiatr Res. 2011 Oct;45(10):1366-72. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2011.05.007. Epub 2011 Jun 25.
White matter architecture in patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) has rarely been investigated, but may yield insights with respect to altered structural brain connectivity. Initial evidence points to alterations in the uncinate fasciculus (UF). We applied diffusion tensor imaging in 25 patients with SAD and 25 matched healthy subjects. Whole-brain fractional anisotropy (FA) maps were used for group comparison and voxel-wise correlation with psychometric and clinical measures. Additionally, a region-of-interest analysis of the UF was performed. Patients with SAD had reduced FA compared to healthy subjects in or near the left UF and the left superior longitudinal fasciculus. There were no regions with increased FA in SAD. In the region-of-interest analysis, a negative correlation between FA and trait anxiety was identified in the left and right UF in patients, but not in healthy subjects. No correlations with social anxiety scores were observed. The present study partially confirms previous results pointing to frontal WM alterations in or near the UF in patients with SAD. SAD-specific dimensional associations of FA with trait anxiety might reflect general pathological and/or compensatory mechanisms as a function of symptom severity in patients. Future studies should disentangle in which way the identified WM alterations match functional alterations.
社交焦虑障碍（SAD）患者的白质结构很少被研究，但可能会深入了解改变的结构脑连接。初步证据指向钩束（UF）的改变。我们在 25 名 SAD 患者和 25 名匹配的健康受试者中应用了弥散张量成像。全脑各向异性分数（FA）图谱用于组间比较，并与心理计量和临床测量进行体素相关性分析。此外，还对 UF 进行了感兴趣区分析。与健康受试者相比，SAD 患者的左侧 UF 和左侧上纵束内或附近的 FA 降低。SAD 中没有 FA 增加的区域。在感兴趣区分析中，患者的左、右 UF 中 FA 与特质焦虑呈负相关，但健康受试者中无此相关性。与社交焦虑评分无相关性。本研究部分证实了先前的研究结果，即在 SAD 患者的 UF 内或附近存在额叶 WM 改变。FA 与特质焦虑的 SAD 特异性维度相关性可能反映了患者症状严重程度的一般病理性和/或代偿性机制。未来的研究应该阐明所确定的 WM 改变与功能改变之间的关系。
