The Neural Representation Of Social Anxiety And Its Influence On The Physical And Psychological Health Of Children

Social anxiety occurs when people being in social situation,they were afraid of getting attention or judgement from others because they considered their behavior and talk were uninteresting and even stupid,thus,they feel nervous and anxious.It's a common experience,as many as 20%~41% of those people who felt nervous or anxious in social situation.Some people choose to avoid social activities after their embarrassing social experience.Feelings of social anxiety generally succeed in increasing individual's desire to develop social skills,which will,to some degree,decrease the negative impact of social anxiety.However,for some people,social anxiety would develop to social anxiety disorder through time,which would decrease one 's feeling of happiness and even have some negative impact on one`s health.Social anxiety could influence many aspects of individual's life.Firstly,social anxiety could decrease one's level of self-esteem.Some people will feeling frustrated and lonely after an unsuccessful social experience,furthermore,individuals who had experienced social anxiety will have higher risk of anxiety disorder or depressive disorder.Social anxiety usually emerged in early childhood.If children ' social anxiety cannot be corrected,it will turn to chronic social anxiety during their adult life.As a kind of negative emotion,social anxiety is closely related to somatic symptoms.Foreign researchers have found that 50%-80% of the depressed patients and Social anxiety disorder patients reported somatic symptoms.Secondly,social anxiety could influenced individual's brain.Plenty of neuroimaging studies indicated that social anxiety could influence the structure and function of brain,such as orbitofrontal cortex,amygdala and hippocampus.Previous studies which compared social anxiety disorder patients and healthy controls indicated that patients show increased GMV(grey matter volume)of left parahippocampal gyrus and middle Occipital Gyrus,furthermore,the GMV of left orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus tend to increase in patients.Some studies also indicated that compared to healthy controls,patients showed increased functional connectivity between amygdala and left middle frontal cortex,left occipital cortex.MRI(Magnetic resonance imaging)is a noninvasive approach to investigate the anatomical structure of the human brain,which have plenty of advantages,such as high spatial resolution and reflect soft tissue structures clearly.Thus MRI developed as an important method for many cognitive neuroscientist.T1 images can be used to differentiate different brain structure.VBM(Voxel-based morphometry)is a neuroimaging analysis technique that allows investigation of focal differences in brain anatomy,using the statistical approach of statistical parametric mapping.Compared with other types of neuroimaging data,T1 images are more suitable for investigating the neuro basis of the difference of individuals' psychological traits.Resting-state fMRI is an approach to map brain function,especially the spontaneous rain activity and interaction between different brain regions when the subject does not perform certain explicit tasks.One of the key concepts in resting-state fMRI is functional connectivity.Functional connectivity can capture the correlation of Blood-oxygen-level independent(BOLD)signal in different brain regions.The stronger functional connectivity suggests the better synchronism and information communication.In the present study,we use questionnaire measured the subjects' social anxiety,loneliness,depression,and perceived stress.Then we combined T1 image and resting state image to investigate the relationship between social anxiety and human brain.Based on previous studies,we hypothesized that social anxiety was related to the GMV of orbitofrontal cortex,hippocampus and amygdala.In addition,we also hypothesized that adolescent with higher level of social anxiety will suffer higher level of loneliness and pressure.In study 1,we collect behavioral data and neuroimaging data of 98 children.The behavioral data conclude the score of The Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children,Child Depression Inventory,and Perceived stress scale and so on.Correlation analysis revealed that social anxiety was positivity related to somatic symptom,trait anxiety,state anxiety,loneliness and perceived stress.Then we used neuroimaging method to investigate the relationship between social anxiety and human brain.The results indicated that social anxiety was positively correlated with the GMV of orbitofrontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,and negatively correlated with the GMV of anterior cingulate cortex.We use these brain areas as seed to analysis functional connectivity,and the results indicated that social anxiety was positively correlated with the functional connectivity between orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus.Furthermore,mediation analysis showed that the relationship between the social anxiety and somatic symptom could be Mediate by the functional connectivity between orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus.In study 2,we use the longitudinal data to confirm the result of study 1.The behavioral data indicated that social anxiety was positively correlated with somatic symptom,depression,loneliness,and perceived stress.The neuroimaging data show the same result as study 1.We also found social anxiety was negatively correlated with the GMV changes of hippocampus and insular between the two time points.In addition,the GMV of right orbitofrontal cortex?right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and left anterior cingulate cortex could predict individuals` social anxiety in the future.In summary,we found social anxiety was positivity related to somatic symptom,trait anxiety,state anxiety,loneliness and perceived stress.We also found social anxiety was positively correlated with the GMV of orbitofrontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,and negatively correlated with the GMV of anterior cingulate cortex.Those changes of brain structure could be the biomarker of the effect of social anxiety on the human brain and the underlying biological mechanism for future psychopathology.As the progress of the investigation of social anxiety using neuroimaging,it could be possible to measure objectively the risk for mental disorders after the social anxiety experience based on MRI.