Presentation
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Social Anxiety in Mentalising: investigating Theory of Mind through fMRI
Poster A11 in Poster Session A, Tuesday, October 24, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Robin Devillers1, Margot Mangnus1,2, Ivan Toni2, Arjen Stolk2,3, Jana Basnakova1,2; 1Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, 2Donders Centre for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, 3Dartmouth College, Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences
Introduction Recent studies into the mechanisms of social anxiety have indicated differences in the processing of various Theory of Mind tasks. Behavioural studies suggest that mentalising is more consistently and strongly affected by social anxiety disorder in comparison to emotion recognition. Yet, such findings have not been consistently replicated in neuroscientific studies; the findings vary in directionality and strength. Moreover, no study has actively investigated the differences using a task-based fMRI setup. Additionally, a large number of studies used designs with an evident element of performance, by including questions. This convolutes the findings as the effects of performance anxiety and social anxiety cannot be separated. Methods The current study assesses the differences in mentalising abilities during a passive theory of mind task, for 130 participants with autism spectrum disorder (50), social anxiety traits (40) and controls (40). In a 7T MRI, a 6-minute animated video was shown with no other instruction than to watch. The video presents three conditions which are separated into various scenes, including emotion recognition (pain condition), mentalising (mental condition) and control condition. As the participants did not have to answer questions during the task, the element of performance was limited during the fMRI session. Afterwards, the participants were asked to describe the various scenes and subsequently, the number of mental state words in relation to irrelevant words was assessed. Their levels of anxiety were measured by the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale. Results Whole-brain analyses suggest significant differences between the Mental, Pain and Control conditions. The Mental condition exhibits higher activities in areas related to Theory of Mind, such as the precuneus, the bilateral superior frontal gyrus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the left parahippocampal gyrus, compared to the pain and the control condition. Almost no differences between groups were found between the conditions; only the control group showed a small but significant cluster in area V3 in comparison to the social anxiety participants in the mental conditions over the pain conditions. However, there was no influence regarding the level of anxiety on the activation, nor were any behavioural differences found in the ratio of mental state words between groups. Conclusions The results of this task suggest that the current task may not be suitable to detect differences between these groups. Moreover, it shows that at a fundamental level, the groups do not differ in their Theory of Mind activation and abilities. As such, tasks with a higher complexity may elicit more variety in responses.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics, Disorders: Developmental