Institute for Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, 610068, China; College of Psychology and Society, University of Shenzhen, 518067, China; Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, FI-40014, Finland.
Institute for Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, 610068, China; College of Psychology and Society, University of Shenzhen, 518067, China; Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Affective and Social Cognitive Science, Shenzhen, 518060, China; Center for Language and Brain, Shenzhen Institute of Neuroscience, Shenzhen, 518057, China.
Neuroimage. 2020 Sep;218:116735. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116735. Epub 2020 Apr 3.
Fear acquisition and generalization play key roles in promoting the survival of mammals and contribute to anxiety disorders. While previous research has provided much evidence for the repercussions of social exclusion on mental health, how social exclusion affects fear acquisition and generalization has received scant attention. In our study, participants were divided into two groups according to two Cyberball paradigm conditions (exclusion/inclusion). Both groups underwent a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and skin conductance response (SCR) assessments. We aimed to determine the effects of social exclusion on fear acquisition and generalization and whether modulation of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) mediates this relationship. Our results showed that socially excluded participants featured significantly higher and lower shock risk scores to safety stimuli (conditioned stimulus, CS-) and threatening stimuli (CS+), respectively, than did socially included subjects during fear acquisition. The exclusion group had increased skin conductance responses (SCRs) to CS and exhibited heightened shock risk and increased SCRs to generalized stimuli compared with the inclusion group. The fNIRS results demonstrated that the CS + evoked larger oxy-Hb changes in the mPFC in the inclusion group than in the exclusion group during fear acquisition. Furthermore, the oxy-Hb of left mPFC of CS + mediated the effect on the association between social exclusion and perceived risk of CS+ in the fear acquisition. Our results indicate that social exclusion impairs fear acquisition and generalization via the mediation of the mPFC and that social exclusion increases susceptibility to anxiety disorders through bias processing of fear discrimination in fear acquisition and generalization. By studying the role of social relationship in fear acquisition and generalization, our research provides new insights into the pathological mechanisms of anxiety disorder.
恐惧的获得和泛化在促进哺乳动物的生存中起着关键作用，并导致焦虑障碍。虽然先前的研究为社会排斥对心理健康的影响提供了大量证据，但社会排斥如何影响恐惧的获得和泛化却很少受到关注。在我们的研究中，参与者根据两个 Cyberball 范式条件（排斥/包容）分为两组。两组都进行了条件反射范式、功能近红外光谱（fNIRS）和皮肤电反应（SCR）评估。我们旨在确定社会排斥对恐惧获得和泛化的影响，以及内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）的调节是否介导这种关系。我们的研究结果表明，与社会包容组相比，社会排斥组在恐惧获得过程中，对安全刺激（条件刺激，CS-）和威胁刺激（CS+）的风险得分明显更高和更低。排斥组对 CS 的皮肤电反应（SCR）增加，对泛化刺激的风险和 SCR 增加。fNIRS 结果表明，在恐惧获得过程中，包含组的 mPFC 中 CS+ 引起的 oxy-Hb 变化大于排斥组。此外，CS+的左 mPFC 的 oxy-Hb 介导了社会排斥与 CS+感知风险之间的关联效应，这种效应在恐惧获得中。我们的研究结果表明，社会排斥通过 mPFC 的介导来损害恐惧的获得和泛化，并且社会排斥通过在恐惧获得和泛化中对恐惧辨别力的偏见处理增加了对焦虑障碍的易感性。通过研究社会关系在恐惧获得和泛化中的作用，我们的研究为焦虑障碍的病理机制提供了新的见解。
