School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China; School of Education and Psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China; Department of Clinical and Developmental Neuropsychology, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.
School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China; School of Education and Psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2024 Dec;85:101988. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2024.101988. Epub 2024 Aug 12.
Social anxious individuals show attention bias towards emotional stimuli, this phenomenon is considered to be an important cause of anxiety generation and maintenance. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a standard psychotherapy for social anxiety disorder. CBT decreases attention biases by correcting the maladaptive beliefs of socially anxious individuals, but it is not clear whether CBT alters neurophysiological features of socially anxious individuals at early automatic and/or late cognitive strategy stage of attentional processing.
To address this knowledge gap, we collected pre-treatment event-related potential data of 22 socially anxious individuals while they performed a dot-probe task. These participants then received eight weeks of CBT, and post-treatment ERP data were collected after completion of CBT treatment. We also included 29 healthy controls and compared them with individuals with social anxiety to determine the neural mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of CBT.
Participants' social anxiety level was significantly alleviated with CBT. ERP results revealed that (1) compared to pre-treatment phase, P1 amplitudes induced by probes significantly decreased at post-treatment phase, whereas P3 amplitudes increased at post-treatment phase; the P1 amplitudes induced by probes following happy-neutral face pairs in socially anxious individuals after treatment was significantly different with that in healthy controls; (2) amplitude of components elicited by face pairs did not change significantly between pre-treatment and post-treatment phases; (3) changes of Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale were positively correlated with changes of P1 amplitude, and negatively correlated with changes of N1 amplitude.
Our sample was university students and lacked randomization, which limits the generalizability of the results.
The present results demonstrated that CBT may adjust cognitive strategies in the later stage of attentional processing, indicating by changed ERPs appeared in probe-presenting stage for social anxiety.
社交焦虑个体对情绪刺激表现出注意偏向，这种现象被认为是焦虑产生和维持的重要原因。认知行为疗法（CBT）是社交焦虑障碍的标准心理疗法。CBT 通过纠正社交焦虑个体的适应不良信念来减少注意偏差，但尚不清楚 CBT 是否会改变社交焦虑个体在注意加工的早期自动和/或晚期认知策略阶段的神经生理特征。
为了解决这一知识空白，我们在 22 名社交焦虑个体进行点探测任务时采集了他们的治疗前事件相关电位数据。这些参与者随后接受了八周的 CBT 治疗，并在 CBT 治疗完成后采集了治疗后的 ERP 数据。我们还纳入了 29 名健康对照者，并将其与社交焦虑个体进行比较，以确定 CBT 有效性的神经机制。
CBT 显著减轻了参与者的社交焦虑水平。ERP 结果显示：（1）与治疗前阶段相比，治疗后阶段探针诱发的 P1 振幅显著降低，而 P3 振幅增加；治疗后社交焦虑个体中探针诱发的快乐-中性面孔对的 P1 振幅与健康对照组明显不同；（2）治疗前和治疗后阶段，面孔对诱发的成分振幅没有显著变化；（3）Liebowitz 社交焦虑量表的变化与 P1 振幅的变化呈正相关，与 N1 振幅的变化呈负相关。
我们的样本是大学生，且缺乏随机分组，这限制了结果的普遍性。
本研究结果表明，CBT 可能会调整注意加工后期的认知策略，这可以通过探针呈现阶段出现的 ERP 变化来表明。
