Neurophysiological effects of cognitive behavioral therapy in social anxiety: An ERP study using a dot-probe task.

Autor: Jiang T; School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China; School of Education and Psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China; Department of Clinical and Developmental Neuropsychology, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands., Song S; School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China; School of Education and Psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China. Electronic address: sutao.song@sdnu.edu.cn., Zhao S; School of Education and Psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China., Tian X; School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China., Zhang M; School of Education and Psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China; Center for Study of Applied Psychology, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China., Feng J; School of Education and Psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China., Ge R; Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 2A1, Canada.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry [J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry] 2024 Dec; Vol. 85, pp. 101988. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Aug 12.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2024.101988
Abstrakt: Background: Social anxious individuals show attention bias towards emotional stimuli, this phenomenon is considered to be an important cause of anxiety generation and maintenance. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a standard psychotherapy for social anxiety disorder. CBT decreases attention biases by correcting the maladaptive beliefs of socially anxious individuals, but it is not clear whether CBT alters neurophysiological features of socially anxious individuals at early automatic and/or late cognitive strategy stage of attentional processing.
Method: To address this knowledge gap, we collected pre-treatment event-related potential data of 22 socially anxious individuals while they performed a dot-probe task. These participants then received eight weeks of CBT, and post-treatment ERP data were collected after completion of CBT treatment. We also included 29 healthy controls and compared them with individuals with social anxiety to determine the neural mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of CBT.
Results: Participants' social anxiety level was significantly alleviated with CBT. ERP results revealed that (1) compared to pre-treatment phase, P1 amplitudes induced by probes significantly decreased at post-treatment phase, whereas P3 amplitudes increased at post-treatment phase; the P1 amplitudes induced by probes following happy-neutral face pairs in socially anxious individuals after treatment was significantly different with that in healthy controls; (2) amplitude of components elicited by face pairs did not change significantly between pre-treatment and post-treatment phases; (3) changes of Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale were positively correlated with changes of P1 amplitude, and negatively correlated with changes of N1 amplitude.
Limitations: Our sample was university students and lacked randomization, which limits the generalizability of the results.
Conclusion: The present results demonstrated that CBT may adjust cognitive strategies in the later stage of attentional processing, indicating by changed ERPs appeared in probe-presenting stage for social anxiety.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
(Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
Externí odkaz: