Social avoidance behavior modulates motivational responses to social reward-threat conflict signals: A preliminary fMRI study

• Published in: Cognitive, affective, & behavioral neuroscience affective, & behavioral neuroscience, 2023-02, Vol.23 (1), p.42-65
• Main Authors: Evans, Travis C., Esterman, Michael, Britton, Jennifer C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Amygdala; Anger; Avoidance behavior; Avoidance Learning; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Facial Expression; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Happiness; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Medical imaging; Mental disorders; Neural networks; Neuroimaging; Neuromodulation; Neurosciences; Paradigms; Prefrontal cortex; Psychology; Reinforcement; Research Article; Reward; Risk factors; Social Behavior; Social exclusion; Social interaction
• ISSN: 1530-7026; 1531-135X
• DOI: 10.3758/s13415-022-01031-x

Social avoidance behavior (SAB) produces impairment in multiple domains and contributes to the development and maintenance of several psychiatric disorders. Social behaviors such as SAB are influenced by approach-avoidance (AA) motivational responses to affective facial expressions. Notably, affective facial expressions communicate varying degrees of social reward signals (happiness), social threat signals (anger), or social reward-threat conflict signals (co-occurring happiness and anger). SAB is associated with dysregulated modulation of automatic approach-avoidance (AA) motivational responses exclusively to social reward-threat conflict signals. However, no neuroimaging research has characterized SAB-related modulation of automatic and subjective AA motivational responses to social reward-threat conflict signals. We recruited 30 adults reporting clinical, moderate, or minimal SAB based on questionnaire cutoff scores. SAB groups were matched on age range and gender. During fMRI scanning, participants completed implicit and subjective approach-avoidance tasks (AATs), which involved more incidental or more explicit evaluation of facial expressions that parametrically varied in social reward signals (e.g., 50% Happy ), social threat signals (e.g., 50% Angry ), or social reward-threat conflict signals (e.g., 50% Happy + 50% Angry ). In the implicit AAT, SAB was associated with slower automatic avoidance actions and weaker amygdala-pgACC connectivity exclusively as a function of social reward-threat conflict signals. In the subjective AAT, SAB was associated with smaller increases in approach ratings, smaller decreases in avoidance ratings, and weaker dlPFC-pgACC connectivity exclusively in response to social reward-threat conflict signals. Thus, SAB is associated with dysregulated modulation of automatic and subjective AA motivational sensitivity to social reward-threat conflict signals, which may be facilitated by overlapping neural systems.