They are laughing at me: cerebral mediation of cognitive biases in social anxiety.

ABSTRACT: The fear of embarrassment and humiliation is the central element of social anxiety. This frequent condition is associated with cognitive biases indicating increased sensitivity to signals of social threat, which are assumed to play a causal role in the maintenance of social anxiety. Here, we employed laughter, a potent medium for the expression of acceptance and rejection, as an experimental stimulus in participants selected for varying degrees of social anxiety to identify cerebral mediators of cognitive biases in social anxiety using functional magnetic resonance imaging in combination with mediation analysis. We directly demonstrated that cerebral activation patterns within the dorsal attention network including the left dorsolateral and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex mediate the influen

SUBMITTER: Kreifelts B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4053467 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature