Dataset Information

Relationship status and perceived support in the social regulation of neural responses to threat.

ABSTRACT: Strong social ties correspond with better health and well being, but the neural mechanisms linking social contact to health remain speculative. This study extends work on the social regulation of brain activity by supportive handholding in 110 participants (51 female) of diverse racial and socioeconomic origins. In addition to main effects of social regulation by handholding, we assessed the moderating effects of both perceived social support and relationship status (married, cohabiting, dating or platonic friends). Results suggest that, under threat of shock, handholding by familiar relational partners attenuates both subjective distress and activity in a network associated with salience, vigilance and regulatory self-control. Moreover, greater perceived social support corresponded with less brain activity in an extended network associated with similar processes, but only during partner handholding. In contrast, we did not observe any regulatory effects of handholding by strangers, and relationship status did not moderate the regulatory effects of partner handholding. These findings suggest that contact with a familiar relational partner is likely to attenuate subjective distress and a variety of neural responses associated with the presence of threat. This effect is likely enhanced by an individual's expectation of the availability of support from their wider social network.

SUBMITTER: Coan JA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5647795 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Relationship status and perceived support in the social regulation of neural responses to threat.

Coan James A JA Beckes Lane L Gonzalez Marlen Z MZ Maresh Erin L EL Brown Casey L CL Hasselmo Karen K

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 20171001 10

Strong social ties correspond with better health and well being, but the neural mechanisms linking social contact to health remain speculative. This study extends work on the social regulation of brain activity by supportive handholding in 110 participants (51 female) of diverse racial and socioeconomic origins. In addition to main effects of social regulation by handholding, we assessed the moderating effects of both perceived social support and relationship status (married, cohabiting, dating ...[more]

PMID: 28985422

Similar Datasets

Project description:ContextSocial anxiety disorder is thought to involve emotional hyperreactivity, cognitive distortions, and ineffective emotion regulation. While the neural bases of emotional reactivity to social stimuli have been described, the neural bases of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation during social and physical threat, and their relationship to social anxiety symptom severity, have yet to be investigated.ObjectiveTo investigate behavioral and neural correlates of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation in patients and controls during processing of social and physical threat stimuli.DesignParticipants were trained to implement cognitive-linguistic regulation of emotional reactivity induced by social (harsh facial expressions) and physical (violent scenes) threat while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and providing behavioral ratings of negative emotion experience.SettingAcademic psychology department.ParticipantsFifteen adults with social anxiety disorder and 17 demographically matched healthy controls.Main outcome measuresBlood oxygen level-dependent signal and negative emotion ratings.ResultsBehaviorally, patients reported greater negative emotion than controls during social and physical threat but showed equivalent reduction in negative emotion following cognitive regulation. Neurally, viewing social threat resulted in greater emotion-related neural responses in patients than controls, with social anxiety symptom severity related to activity in a network of emotion- and attention-processing regions in patients only. Viewing physical threat produced no between-group differences. Regulation during social threat resulted in greater cognitive and attention regulation-related brain activation in controls compared with patients. Regulation during physical threat produced greater cognitive control-related response (ie, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) in patients compared with controls.ConclusionsCompared with controls, patients demonstrated exaggerated negative emotion reactivity and reduced cognitive regulation-related neural activation, specifically for social threat stimuli. These findings help to elucidate potential neural mechanisms of emotion regulation that might serve as biomarkers for interventions for social anxiety disorder.

Dataset Information

Relationship status and perceived support in the social regulation of neural responses to threat.

Publications

Relationship status and perceived support in the social regulation of neural responses to threat.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets