Citation

Umemoto A, Cole SL, Allison GO, Dolan S, Lazarov A, Auerbach RP, Schneier F. J. Psychiatr. Res. 2021; 143: 155-162.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.09.022

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with fear of negative evaluation and heightened performance monitoring. The best-established treatments help only a subset of patients, and there are no well-established predictors of treatment response. The current study investigated whether individual differences in processing errors might predict response to gaze-contingent music reward therapy (GC-MRT). At baseline, healthy control subjects (HC; n = 20) and adults with SAD (n = 29), ages 19-43 years, completed the Flanker Task while electroencephalography (EEG) data were recorded. SAD participants then received up to 12 sessions over 8 weeks of GC-MRT, designed to train participants' attention away from threatening and toward neutral faces. Clinical assessments were completed 9- (post-treatment) and 20-weeks (follow-up) after initiating the treatment. At baseline, compared to HC, SAD performed the task more accurately and exhibited increased error-related negativity (ERN) and delta power to error commission. After controlling for age and baseline symptoms, more negative ERN and increased frontal midline theta (FMT) predicted reduced self-reported social anxiety symptoms at post-treatment, and FMT also predicted clinician-rated and self-reported symptom reduction at the follow-up assessment. Hypervigilance to error is characteristic of SAD and warrants further research as a predictor of treatment response for GC-MRT.

Language: en

Keywords

Attention bias modification treatment; Delta; ERN; Error monitoring; Frontal midline theta; Pe