Yang Xun, Wang Siqi, Kendrick Keith Maurice, Wu Xi, Yao Li, Lei Du, Kuang Weihong, Bi Feng, Huang Xiaoqi, He Yong, Gong Qiyong
Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China, School of Sociality and Psychology, Southwest University for Nationalities, Chengdu 610041, China.
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2015 Dec;10(12):1634-43. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsv052. Epub 2015 May 20.
Shyness is a fundamental trait associated with social-emotional maladaptive behaviors, including many forms of psychopathology. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that hyper-responsivity to social and emotional stimuli occurs in the frontal cortex and limbic system in shy individuals, but the relationship between shyness and brain-wide functional connectivity remains incompletely understood. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, we addressed this issue by exploring the relationship between regional functional connectivity strength (rFCS) and scores of shyness in a cohort of 61 healthy young adults and controlling for the effects of social and trait anxiety scores. We observed that the rFCS of the insula positively correlated with shyness scores regardless of sex. Furthermore, we found that there were significant sex-by-shyness interactions in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and insula (two core nodes of the salience network) as well as the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex: the rFCS values of these regions positively correlated with shyness scores in females but negatively correlated in males. Taken together, we provide evidence for intrinsic functional connectivity differences in individuals with different degrees of shyness and that these differences are sex-dependent. These findings might have important implications on the understanding of biological mechanisms underlying emotional and cognitive processing associated with shyness.
害羞是一种与社会情感适应不良行为相关的基本特质，包括多种形式的精神病理学。神经影像学研究表明，害羞个体的额叶皮质和边缘系统对社会和情感刺激存在过度反应，但害羞与全脑功能连接之间的关系仍未完全理解。我们使用静息态功能磁共振成像，通过在61名健康年轻成年人队列中探索区域功能连接强度（rFCS）与害羞得分之间的关系，并控制社会和特质焦虑得分的影响，来解决这个问题。我们观察到，无论性别如何，岛叶的rFCS与害羞得分呈正相关。此外，我们发现背侧前扣带回皮质和岛叶（突显网络的两个核心节点）以及膝下前扣带回皮质存在显著的性别与害羞交互作用：这些区域的rFCS值在女性中与害羞得分呈正相关，而在男性中呈负相关。综上所述，我们为不同程度害羞个体的内在功能连接差异提供了证据，并且这些差异是性别依赖性的。这些发现可能对理解与害羞相关的情感和认知加工的生物学机制具有重要意义。
