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. 2014 Jul;35(7):2966-77.
doi: 10.1002/hbm.22378. Epub 2013 Sep 13.

Increased cortical thickness in a frontoparietal network in social anxiety disorder

Annette Beatrix Brühl  1 , Jürgen Hänggi, Volker Baur, Michael Rufer, Aba Delsignore, Steffi Weidt, Lutz Jäncke, Uwe Herwig
Affiliations

Increased cortical thickness in a frontoparietal network in social anxiety disorder

Annette Beatrix Brühl et al. Hum Brain Mapp. 2014 Jul.

Abstract

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is the second leading anxiety disorder. On the functional neurobiological level, specific brain regions involved in the processing of anxiety-laden stimuli and in emotion regulation have been shown to be hyperactive and hyper-responsive in SAD such as amygdala, insula and orbito- and prefrontal cortex. On the level of brain structure, prior studies on anatomical differences in SAD resulted in mixed and partially contradictory findings. Based on previous functional and anatomical models of SAD, this study examined cortical thickness in structural magnetic resonance imaging data of 46 patients with SAD without comorbidities (except for depressed episode in one patient) compared with 46 matched healthy controls in a region of interest-analysis and in whole-brain. In a theory-driven ROI-analysis, cortical thickness was increased in SAD in left insula, right anterior cingulate and right temporal pole. Furthermore, the whole-brain analysis revealed increased thickness in right dorsolateral prefrontal and right parietal cortex. This study detected no regions of decreased cortical thickness or brain volume in SAD. From the perspective of brain networks, these findings are in line with prior functional differences in salience networks and frontoparietal networks associated with executive-controlling and attentional functions.

Keywords: DLPFC; MRI; amygdale; anatomy; anterior cingulate; anxiety disorders; dorsal attention network; emotion processing; hippocampus; insula.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Results of the ROI analysis. Given are mean and SEM. L left, R right, TP temporal pole, ACC anterior cingulate cortex, OFC orbitofrontal cortex, PHG parahippocampal gyrus, STG superior temporal gyrus. *Significant difference corrected for multiple comparisons (P < 0.0098), (*)significant difference without correction for multiple comparisons (P < 0.05).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Results of the vertex‐wise whole‐brain cortical thickness analysis (significant group differences, P < 0.05 corrected for multiple comparisons).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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