Elevated amygdala activity during reappraisal anticipation predicts anxiety in avoidant personality disorder.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Avoidant personality disorder is characterized by pervasive anxiety, fear of criticism, disapproval, and rejection, particularly in anticipation of exposure to social situations. An important but underexplored question concerns whether anxiety in avoidant patients is associated with an impaired ability to engage emotion regulatory strategies in anticipation of and during appraisal of negative social stimuli.

Methods

We examined the use of an adaptive emotion regulation strategy, cognitive reappraisal, in avoidant patients. In addition to assessing individual differences in state and trait anxiety levels, self-reported affect as well as measures of neural activity were compared between 17 avoidant patients and 21 healthy control participants both in anticipation of

SUBMITTER: Denny BT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5831394 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature