Anxiously elaborating the social percept: Anxiety and age differences in functional connectivity of the fusiform face area in a peer evaluation paradigm

Objectives: Social anxiety disorder involves biased cognition and altered neural responses to social stimuli. This study further assesses the precise ways in which neural activation associated with perceptual processing of faces differs in socially anxious and non-anxious individuals. Method: Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired as 90 anxious or healthy juveniles and adults performed a peer feedback task. Psychophysiological functional connectivity analysis was performed on all participants using a seed placed in the right fusiform face area (rFFA). Results: Social anxiety was associated with enhanced rFFA coupling in several areas of ventral visual stream when viewing feedback from peers previously rejected by participants; healthy participants demonstrated the opposite pattern. Moreover, anxious juveniles had greater positive rFFA coupling with right inferior temporal gyrus during feedback from rejected peers; other groups showed the opposite pattern. Finally, anxious juveniles had greater positive rFFA coupling with pregenual anterior cingulate cortex during negative peer feedback; other groups displayed the opposite pattern. Conclusions: Anxious individuals, and juveniles in particular, may dedicate more neural resources to stimuli associated with potentially negative, relative to positive, social outcomes; non-anxious individuals may do the opposite.