Department of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Leipzig University, Neumarkt 9, 04109 Leipzig, Germany.
Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Institute of Psychology, University of Freiburg, Engelbergerstr. 41, 79106 Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.
Biol Psychol. 2024 Sep;191:108827. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2024.108827. Epub 2024 Jun 7.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders during childhood and adolescence. Yet, little is known about its maintenance in youth. Cognitive models of SAD indicate that attentional biases play a key role in the dysfunctional processing of social information, such as emotional faces. However, previous research investigating neural correlates of childhood SAD has produced inconsistent findings. The current study aims to investigate neural face processing in children and adolescents with SAD, while taking into consideration methodological limitations of previous studies. We measured event-related potentials (P100, N170, EPN, LPP) in response to happy, neutral, and angry adult faces, and non-social household objects, in a sample of youth (aged 10-15 years) with SAD (n = 57), clinical controls with specific phobias (SP; n = 41), and healthy controls (HC; n = 61). Participants completed an emotion/object identification task while continuous EEG was recorded. Analyses revealed lower N170 amplitudes in the SAD group compared to HCs, irrespective of emotion. In addition, younger children (aged 10-12 years) with SAD showed lower EPN amplitudes and higher early LPP amplitudes (only trend level) in response to neutral and happy faces compared to younger HCs. These effects were specific to faces and were not evident in the neural processing of non-social household objects. Overall, the findings indicate that different neural response patterns are already present in youth with SAD. Group differences, particularly in younger children, suggest age-related differences in neural face processing in childhood SAD and underpin the necessity of developmental approaches.
社交焦虑障碍（SAD）是儿童和青少年中最常见的精神障碍之一。然而，人们对其在年轻人中的维持机制知之甚少。SAD 的认知模型表明，注意力偏差在社交信息（如情绪面孔）的功能失调处理中起着关键作用。然而，以前研究儿童 SAD 的神经相关性的研究结果不一致。本研究旨在调查 SAD 儿童和青少年的神经面部处理，同时考虑到以前研究的方法学限制。我们在 SAD 患者（n=57）、特定恐惧症（SP；n=41）的临床对照组和健康对照组（n=61）的样本中测量了对快乐、中性和愤怒的成年面孔以及非社会家庭物体的事件相关电位（P100、N170、EPN、LPP）。参与者在完成情绪/物体识别任务的同时记录连续脑电图。分析表明，与 HC 相比，SAD 组的 N170 振幅较低，而与情绪无关。此外，患有 SAD 的年龄较小的儿童（10-12 岁）对中性和快乐的面部反应的 EPN 振幅较低，早期 LPP 振幅较高（仅趋势水平）与年龄较小的 HC 相比。这些影响是针对面部的，在非社会家庭物体的神经处理中并不明显。总体而言，这些发现表明，SAD 青少年已经存在不同的神经反应模式。组间差异，特别是在年龄较小的儿童中，表明儿童 SAD 中神经面部处理存在与年龄相关的差异，并强调了采用发展方法的必要性。
