Journal
NEUROPHARMACOLOGY
Volume 180, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2020.108301
Keywords
Social anxiety disorder; Children and adolescents; Parental stress; Thalamic asymmetry; Brain development
Categories
Funding
- National Key R&D Program of China [2018YFC2001600]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [81971682, 81571756, 81270023]
- Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai [20ZR1472800]
- Project of Shanghai Children's Health Service Capacity Construction [GDEK201702]
- Shanghai Municipal Commission of Education-Gaofeng Clinical Medicine [20171929]
- Hundred-Talent Fund from Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health [2018BR17]
- Shanghai Mental Health Center Clinical Research Center [CRC2018DSJ01-5, CRC2019ZD04]
- Research Funds from Shanghai Mental Health Center [13dz2260500, 2018-YJ-02, 2018-YJ-03]
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine Child Developing Brain Research Center
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Social anxiety disorder (SAD) usually onsets in childhood or adolescence and is associated with brain develop-ment and chronic family stress during this period. As an information hub, the thalamus plays a crucial role in the development of emotion processing and stress regulation. Its structural and functional lateralization have been related to mental disorders. This study examined the age-dependent asymmetry of the thalamic volume in children and adolescents with SAD. We further examined the role of the thalamic asymmetry in moderating the relationships between parental alienation, which is a main source of familial stress for children and adolescents, and anxiety symptoms in this population. Fifty-three medication-free children and adolescents with SAD and 53 typical developing controls (age: 8-17) were included. Anxiety severity was measured using the Screen for Child Anxiety-Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED). We estimated the bilateral thalamic volume and examined diagnosis effect and age-group difference on the thalamic asymmetry. We further examined the moderation of the thalamic asymmetry on the associations between scores on the parental alienation, social phobia, and total SCARED. Compared with controls, the SAD group exhibited significantly abnormal asymmetry in thalamic volume. This asymmetry became more evident in the older age group. Furthermore, this asymmetry significantly weakened the relationships between parental attachment and total SCARED score. The asymmetry of the thalamic volume and its age-group difference provide novel evidence to support brain developmental abnormalities in children and adolescents with SAD. The findings further revealed interactions between physiological and chronic stress in children and adolescents with SAD. This article is part of the special issue on 'Stress, Addiction and Plasticity'.
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