TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2019//
TI  - Tuned to voices and faces: cerebral responses linked to social anxiety
JO  - NeuroImage
A1  - Kreifelts, Benjamin
A1  - Eckstein, Kathrin N.
A1  - Ethofer, Thomas
A1  - Wiegand, Ariane
A1  - Wächter, Sarah
A1  - Brück, Carolin
A1  - Erb, Michael
A1  - Lotze, Martin
A1  - Wildgruber, Dirk
SP  - 450
EP  - 456
VL  - 197
IS  - 
N2  - Voices and faces are the most common sources of threat in social anxiety (SA) where the fear of negative evaluation and social exclusion is the central element. SA itself is spectrally distributed among the general population and its clinical manifestation, termed social anxiety disorder, is one of the most common anxiety disorders. While heightened cerebral responses to angry or contemptuous facial or vocal expressions are well documented, it remains unclear if the brain of socially anxious individuals is generally more sensitive to voices and faces. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated how SA affects the cerebral processing of voices and faces as compared to various other stimulus types in a study population with greatly varying SA (N = 50, 26 female). While cerebral voice-sensitivity correlated positive with SA in the left temporal voice area (TVA) and the left amygdala, an association of face-sensitivity and SA was observed in the right fusiform face area (FFA) and the face processing area of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTSFA). These results demonstrate that the increase of cerebral responses associated with social anxiety is not limited to facial or vocal expressions of social threat but that the respective sensory and emotion processing structures are also generally tuned to voices and faces.<br><br>Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1053-8119
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.05.018
ID  - ref1
ER  -