Remembering social threat: Fronto-striatal mechanisms promote memory bias in socially anxious adolescents

• In Event: Neural response to social feedback from parents and peers: Links to adolescent emotional health

Abstract

While prominent theories suggest that biased memory for negative social outcomes contribute to social anxiety symptoms, such biases are relatively understudied in adolescents and their neural mechanisms are poorly mapped. This omission is significant because memory is reconstructive and fundamentally malleable, making it an ideal target for treatment. Our prior work demonstrates social anxiety is associated with greater striatal engagement during rejection, suggesting negative feedback may have greater motivational significance among socially anxious youth. However, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)-striatal connectivity facilitates learning about motivationally significant events, and integrates this learning into generalized representations that enable prior experiences to inform behavior in novel contexts. In this way mPFC-striatal connectivity while encoding social outcomes may contribute to symptom-promoting biased memory for negative feedback. We developed an fMRI-based task to test the neural mechanisms of memory bias for peer feedback in adolescents with varying levels of social anxiety symptoms.
Hypotheses: Social anxiety will be associated with biased memory for negative social outcomes. While encoding negative compared to positive outcomes, social anxiety will be associated with greater ventral striatal engagement and enhanced mPFC-ventral striatal connectivity. Strength of connectivity will predict degree of biased memory for negative outcomes in socially anxious youth.

Adolescents (N=37; 17 female; M=13.14 ± 1.18 years) with a range of social anxiety were told they were completing a social evaluation study and provided a photo of themselves that was sent to purported age-matched peers who indicated they ‘liked’, ‘disliked’, or ‘did not rate’ the participant. During fMRI participants encoded an equal amount of positive, negative, and no-rating feedback from purported peers. Post-scan, participants were unexpectedly asked to recall feedback provided by each peer. Recall bias was calculated by dividing the number of peers recalled as providing positive feedback by the total number of recalled as providing positive or negative feedback. Region of interest-based analyses tested the relation between social anxiety symptoms and ventral striatal engagement during dislike vs. like feedback. Psychophysiological interaction analyses tested the relation between social anxiety and mPFC-ventral striatal connectivity during dislike vs. like feedback. The relation between connectivity and recall bias was tested in socially anxious compared with non-anxious adolescents. Because of its association with negativity biases and comorbidity with social anxiety, depressive symptoms were controlled for in all analyses.

More severe symptoms of social anxiety were associated with biased recall towards negative feedback (r=-.35, p<.05), greater ventral striatal engagement for being disliked vs. liked (r=.43, p<.05), and more positive mPFC-ventral striatal functional connectivity for being disliked vs. liked (r=.60, p<.005). Moreover, degree of positive connectivity was associated with a bias towards recalling negative feedback among socially anxious (r=-.55), but not non-anxious (r=.09) adolescents.

Taken together, results suggest a plausible neural mechanism supporting the expression of adolescent social anxiety. Specifically, mPFC-striatal connectivity may facilitate learning about motivationally significant negative peer feedback. As negative feedback becomes integrated into generalized representations of social encounters, biased recall may inform behavior in novel social contexts, thereby prompting symptoms of social anxiety.

Authors

• Johanna M Jarcho, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Camille R Johnston

• Chelsea Helion, Temple University

• Vishnu P. Murty, Temple University