Altered time course of amygdala activation during speech anticipation in social anxiety disorder
Open accessAbstract
Background Exaggerated anticipatory anxiety is common in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Neuroimaging studies have revealed altered neural activity in response to social stimuli in SAD, but fewer studies have examined neural activity during anticipation of feared social stimuli in SAD. The current study examined the time course and magnitude of activity in threat processing brain regions during speech anticipation in socially anxious individuals and healthy controls (HC).Method Participants (SAD n=58; HC n=16) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during which they completed a 90s control anticipation task and 90s speech anticipation task. Repeated measures multi-level modeling analyses were used to examine group differences in time course activity during speech vs. control anticipation for regions of interest, including bilateral amygdala, insula, ventral striatum, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.Results The time course of amygdala activity was more prolonged and less variable throughout speech anticipation in SAD participants compared to HCs, whereas the overall magnitude of amygdala response did not differ between groups. Magnitude and time course of activity was largely similar between groups across other regions of interest.Limitations Analyses were restricted to regions of interest and task order was the same across participants due to the nature of deception instructions.Conclusions Sustained amygdala time course during anticipation may uniquely reflect heightened detection of threat or deficits in emotion regulation in socially anxious individuals. Findings highlight the importance of examining temporal dynamics of amygdala responding.
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Patients with SAD show sustained and heightened amygdala activation during anticipation of public speaking compared with healthy controls.
“patients with SAD show sustained and heightened amygdala activation during anticipation of public speaking compared with healthy controls”
From Epidemiology, genetics, neuroimaging, clinical features, and treatment between overall and performance-only social anxiety disorder: a narrative review (2026) · cites this paper as Davies et al. 2017
The Discussion (Amygdala responses; page unavailable) reports more sustained amygdala activity during speech anticipation in participants with SAD than in healthy controls, though the pattern varied across task segments. It explicitly reports no difference in overall amygdala-response magnitude, so the claim of heightened activation is not supported. (LLM, conf=0.90)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAmygdala hyper-reactivity to social or emotional cues is consistently linked to SAD pathophysiology, and its degree tracks symptom severity.
“In response to social or emotional stimuli, amygdala hyper-reactivity has been consistently implicated in the pathophysiology of SAD (Davies et al., 2017), the degree of which also corresponds with symptom severity (Goldin, Manber, Hakimi, Canli, & Gross, 2009).”
From Changes in functional connectivity with cognitive behavioral therapy for social anxiety disorder predict outcomes at follow-up (2020) · cites this paper as Davies et al., 2017
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“Compared to healthy individuals, individuals with SAD demonstrate aberrant activity in and connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal regions (Freitas-Ferrari et al., 2010).”
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“…example, patients with SAD show sustained and heightened amygdala activation during anticipation of public speaking compared with healthy controls (Davies et al. 2017), along with reduced regulatory coupling between prefrontal cortical regions and the amygdala during speech anticipation (cremers…”
- Authors
- Davies, C. D., Young, K., Torre, J. B., Burklund, L. J., Goldin, P. R., Brown, L. A., Niles, A. N., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- University of California, Davis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Craske, Michelle G.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Journal of Affective Disorders
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-02
- Volume
- 209
- Pages
- 23-29
- ISSN
- 0165-0327 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5191910
- OpenAlex
- W2555696741
- Cited by
- 21
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3
- FWCI
- 2.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of Affective Disorders (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R21MH081299)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- social anxiety disorder, amygdala, anticipatory anxiety, threat processing, insula, ventral striatum, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, emotion regulation
- MeSH terms
- Phobia, Social, Adult, Amygdala, Brain, Brain Mapping, Cerebral Cortex, Female, Gyrus Cinguli, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Speech, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Young Adult, Anticipation, Psychological, Ventral Striatum
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