The following is a summary of “Higher Intersubject Variability in Neural Response to Narrative Social Stimuli Among Youth With Higher Social Anxiety,” published in the December 2023 issue of Psychiatry by Camacho et al.

This study aims to elucidate the intricate connections between social anxiety symptoms and the neural responses evoked by social cues portrayed in movies among children. Despite previous insights into socio-emotional alterations linked to social anxiety, understanding the nuanced pathophysiology remains a challenge. Leveraging data from the Healthy Brain Network consisting of 740 individuals aged 5 to 15, the investigation explores the intricate associations between reported social anxiety symptoms and the observable neural responses during exposure to emotionally dynamic movies. Splitting the dataset into Discovery and Replication samples was pivotal, facilitating a comprehensive analysis and maximizing the generalizability of findings. 

The goal is to ascertain whether there exists a discernible relationship between social anxiety symptoms, as reported by both parents and the children themselves using the Screen for Child Anxiety-related Emotional Disorders, and the patterns of brain activity during exposure to these narrative-driven films, which present a more naturalistic portrayal of socio-emotional cues embedded within contextual narratives. The study scrutinizes the extent of the association between reported social anxiety symptoms and the mean differences, as well as the person-to-person variability in fMRI-measured activation patterns elicited by emotionally charged cinematic content. Surprisingly, while there was no substantial evidence supporting an association between social anxiety symptoms and the mean differences in neural activity in response to emotional content, intriguing findings emerged, highlighting that children exhibiting higher social anxiety symptoms tend to display increased inter-subject variability in neural activation patterns. 

Specifically, heightened variability was observed in brain regions correlated with attention, alertness, and the processing of emotional cues, such as the posterior cingulate, supramarginal gyrus, and inferior frontal gyrus (Bonferroni FWE-corrected ps<0.05). Notably, these associations were influenced by the age of the participants and the informants, indicating variances across developmental stages and sources of symptom reporting. Additionally, the effects were amplified when the movie scenes exhibited greater sensory intensity, increased brightness, louder audio, heightened motion, and vibrance across different age groups. These findings suggest that children presenting higher social anxiety symptoms manifest varying neural responses concerning sensory aspects of emotional content, implying a necessity for personalized interventions addressing the individual sensory and emotional needs of these children, considering the distinctive neurological responses observed across the spectrum of social anxiety symptoms.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0890856723022347