Background Generalized Social Phobia (GSP) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) are both associated with emotion dysregulation. In healthy subjects, research implicates dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) in both explicit emotion regulation and top-down attentional control. While studies have examined these processes in GSP or GAD, no work compares findings across the two disorders. Moreover, no work examines functioning in cases comorbid for both disorders (GSP/GAD). Here we compare the neural correlates of explicit emotion regulation (EER) and top-down attentional control (TAC) in GSP, GAD, and GSP/GAD. Method Medication-free adults with GSP (EER n=19; TAC n=18), GAD (EER n=17; TAC n =17), GSP/GAD (EER n=17; TAC=15), or no psychopathology (EER n=18; TAC n=18). During EER, individuals alternatively viewed, up-regulated, and down-regulated responses to emotional pictures. During TAC, they performed an emotional Stroop task. Results For both tasks, significant group-by-condition interactions emerged in dACC and parietal cortices. Healthy adults showed significantly increased recruitment during emotion regulation, relative to emotion-picture viewing. GAD, GSP, and GSP/GAD subjects showed no such increases, with all three groups differing from healthy adults but not from each other. Evidence of emotion-related disorder-specificity emerged in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and amygdala. This disorder-specific responding varied as a function of stimulus emotion content but not emotion-regulatory demands. Conclusions GSP and GAD both involve reduced capacity for engaging emotion-regulation brain networks, whether explicitly or via top-down attentional control. A reduced ability to recruit regions implicated in top-down attention might represent a general risk factor for anxiety disorders.

Objective Generalized social phobia (GSP) is defined by a persistent fear of social disapproval. However, the neural underpinnings of this increased fear and its mediating factors are unclear. Using event-related fMRI, we examined whether the intent of an event, which mediates the neural response to social disapproval in healthy individuals, differentially affects response in GSP. Specifically, would patients with GSP show particularly increased response to embarrassing, unintentional transgressions? Method Sixteen patients with GSP and sixteen age, IQ, and gender matched healthy individuals read stories during fMRI scans that either involved neutral social events, unintentional social transgressions (e.g., choking on food at party, and coughing it up), or intentional social transgressions (e.g., disliking food at party, and spitting it out). Results Significant group-by-transgression interactions were observed within ventral regions of medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Healthy individuals tended to show increased BOLD responses to intentional, relative to unintentional transgressions. The patients with GSP, however, showed significantly increased responses to the unintentional transgressions. In addition, they rated the unintentional transgressions as significantly more embarrassing than the comparison individuals. We also observed significant group main effects within the amygdala and bilateral insula, reflecting elevated GSP responses within these regions to all event types. Conclusions These results further implicate the MPFC in the pathophysiology of GSP, specifically through its involvement in distorted self-referential processing. In addition, the current results further underscore the extended role of the amygdala and insula in the processing of social stimuli more generally in GSP.

Generalized social phobia (GSP) involves the fear of being negatively evaluated. Previous work suggests that self-referentiality, mediated by medial prefrontal cortex (MFPC), plays an important role in the disorder. However, it is not clear whether this anomalous MPFC response to selfrelated information in patients with GSP concerns an increased representation of their own or others' opinions. In this paper we examined whether GSP is associated with increased response to own (1 st person) or other individuals' (2 nd person) opinions relative to healthy individuals. Unmedicated individuals with GSP (n=15) and age, IQ, and gender-matched comparison individuals (n=15) read 1 st (e.g., I'm ugly), and 2 nd (e.g., You're ugly) person viewpoint comments during fMRI. We observed significant group-by-viewpoint interactions within ventral MPFC. Whereas the healthy comparison individuals showed significantly increased (or less decreased) BOLD responses to 1 st relative to 2 nd person viewpoints, the patients showed significantly increased responses to 2 nd relative to 1 st person viewpoints. The reduced BOLD responses to 1 st person viewpoint comments shown by the patients correlated significantly with severity of social anxiety symptom severity. These results underscore the importance of dysfunctional selfreferential processing and MPFC in GSP. We believe that these data reflect a reorganization of self-referential reasoning in the disorder with a self-concept perhaps atypically related to the view of others.

Optimistic bias (OB) is seen when individuals underestimate their probability of experiencing negative life events and overestimate their probability of experiencing positive life events. A reduced OB has been linked with increased depression symptoms . However, given the relevance of this information to mood and anxiety disorders, little is currently known regarding the neurobiology of OB. In the current study, we examine the neural basis of OB in healthy individuals (n=33) during probability estimation of future positive and negative events occurring to themselves relative to other, comparable individuals. In line with previous work, subjects showed significant OB; they considered themselves significantly more likely to experience future positive and significantly less likely to experience future negative events relative to comparable others. Positive, relative to negative events, un-modulated by subjects’ probability estimates, were associated with significantly greater activity within ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Moreover, responses within both regions to positive events negatively related to the healthy subjects’ self reports of depression symptoms. However, there was no significant modulation of activity in either region by the subject’s OB, objectified as the level to which they thought the event was more likely [positive events] or less likely [negative events] to occur to them relative to comparable others. In contrast, activity within rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) was positively modulated by OB for positive events and activity within anterior insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) was negatively modulated by OB for negative events. However, there was no significant relationship between responsiveness within these regions and self reports of depression symptoms. The data are discussed with reference to current models of vmPFC, rACC and anterior insula functioning.

Objective While social phobia (SP) in adolescence predicts risk for SP in adulthood, no work has directly compared neural responses in SP adults and adolescents. The current study examines neural response to facial expressions in adult and adolescent SP to determine whether the neural correlates of adult SP during face processing also manifest in adolescent SP. Method Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) was compared in 39 medication-free individuals with SP (25 adults and 14 adolescents), and 39 healthy comparison individuals (23 adult and 16 adolescent) matched on age, IQ, and gender using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During fMRI scans, individuals saw angry, fearful, and neutral expression stimuli while making a gender judgment. Results Hypothesized significant diagnosis-by-emotion interactions were observed within the amygdala and rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC). In these regions, the adolescent and adult SP patients both showed significantly increased BOLD responses, relative to their respective age-matched comparison groups, with no evidence of age-related modulation of between-group differences. These enhanced responses occurred specifically to angry (rACC) and fearful (amygdala and rACC) but not neutral expressions. In addition, SP severity correlated significantly with this enhanced rACC response in the adults. Conclusions The neural correlates of adult SP during face processing also manifest in adolescents. As such, neural correlates observed in adult SP may represent the persistence of profiles established earlier in life, rather than adaptive responses to such earlier perturbations or maturational changes. These cross-sectional observations might encourage longitudinal fMRI studies of adolescent SP.

Positivity resonance-defined as a synthesis of shared positive affect, mutual care and concern, plus behavioral and biological synchrony-is theorized to contribute to a host of positive outcomes, including relationship satisfaction. The current study examined whether, in long-term married couples, behavioral indices of positivity resonance (rated using a new behavioral coding system) are associated with concurrent shared positive affect using a well-established dyadic-level behavioral coding system (i.e., Specific Affect Coding System: SPAFF), and whether positivity resonance predicts concurrent marital satisfaction independently from other affective indices. Long-term married couples completed a selfreport inventory assessing marital satisfaction and were then brought into the laboratory to participate in a conversation about an area of marital disagreement while being videotaped for subsequent behavioral coding. Interrater reliability for positivity resonance behavioral coding was high (intraclass correlation coefficient: 0.8). Results indicated that positivity resonance is associated with frequency of shared positive affect using SPAFF. No associations were found between positivity resonance and frequencies of SPAFF-coded individual-level positive affect or shared negative affect. Additionally, positivity resonance predicted marital satisfaction independently from frequencies of SPAFF-coded shared positive affect and individual-level positive affect alone. The effect of positivity resonance on marital satisfaction also remained significant after controlling for overall affective tone of conflict conversation. These findings provide preliminary construct and predictive validity for positivity resonance behavioral coding, and highlight the possible role positivity resonance may play in building relationship satisfaction in married couples.

Physiological linkage refers to the degree to which peoples’ physiological responses change in coordinated ways. Here, we examine whether and how physiological linkage relates to incidents of shared emotion, distinguished by valence. Past research has used an “overall average” approach and characterized how physiological linkage over relatively long time periods (e.g., 10–15 min) reflects psychological and social processes (e.g., marital satisfaction, empathy). Here, we used a “momentary” approach and characterized whether physiological linkage over relatively short time periods (i.e., 15 s) reflects shared positive emotion, shared negative emotion, or both, and whether linkage during shared emotions relates to relational functioning. Married couples (156 dyads) had a 15-min conflict conversation in the laboratory. Using behavioral coding, each second of conversation was classified into 1 of 4 emotion categories: shared positive emotion, shared negative emotion, shared neutral emotion, or unshared emotion. Using a composite of 3 peripheral physiological measures (i.e., heart rate, skin conductance, finger pulse amplitude), we computed momentary in-phase and antiphase linkage to represent coordinated changes in the same or opposite direction, respectively. We found that shared positive emotion was associated with higher in-phase and lower antiphase linkage, relative to the other 3 emotion categories. Greater in-phase physiological linkage during shared positive emotion was also consistently associated with higher-quality interactions and relationships, both concurrently and longitudinally (i.e., 5 to 6 years later). These findings advance our understanding of the nature of physiological linkage, the emotional conditions under which it occurs, and its possible associations with relational functioning.

Motivated by collective emotions theories that propose emotions shared between individuals predict group-level qualities, we hypothesized that co-experienced affect during interactions is associated with relationship quality, above and beyond the effects of individually experienced affect. Consistent with positivity resonance theory, we also hypothesized that co-experienced positive affect would have a stronger association with relationship quality than would co-experienced negative affect. We tested these hypotheses in 150 married couples across 3 conversational interactions: a conflict, a neutral topic, and a pleasant topic. Spouses continuously rated their individual affective experience during each conversation while watching video-recordings of their interactions. These individual affect ratings were used to determine, for positive and negative affect separately, the number of seconds of co-experienced affect and individually experienced affect during each conversation. In line with hypotheses, results from all 3 conversational topics suggest that more co-experienced positive affect is associated with greater marital quality, whereas more co-experienced negative affect is associated with worse marital quality. Individual level affect factors added little explanatory value beyond co-experienced affect. Comparing coexperienced positive affect and co-experienced negative affect, we found that co-experienced positive affect generally outperformed co-experienced negative affect, although co-experienced negative affect was especially diagnostic during the pleasant conversational topic. Findings suggest that co-experienced positive affect may be an integral component of high-quality relationships and highlight the power of co-experienced affect for individual perceptions of relationship quality.