Research Paper Title

Emotional Information Processing and Assessment of Cognitive Functions in Social Anxiety Disorder: An Event-Related Potential Study.

Background

The aim of the study was to determine deficits in cognitive areas, including social cognition such as emotion recognition capacity, theory of mind, and electrophysiological alterations in patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and to identify their effects on clinical severity of SAD.

Methods

Enrolled in the study were 26 patients diagnosed with SAD and 26 healthy volunteers. They were administered the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), Reading Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), and Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. EEG monitoring was performed for electrophsiologic investigation.

Results

In the patient group, total reading the mind scores were lower (P = .027) while P300 latencies and emotion recognition latency during the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT) were longer (P = .038 and P = .012, respectively). The false alarm scores in the Rapid Visual Information Processing Task (RVP) were higher in the patient group (P = .038).

In a model created using multivariate linear regression analysis, an effect of ERT and RVP scores on LSAS scores was found.

Conclusions

The researches suggest the results of the study confirm that particularly impairment of cognitive functions such as sustained attention and emotion recognition may seriously affect the clinical presentation negatively. P300 latency in the parietal region may has the potential to be a biological marker that can be used in monitoring treatment.

Reference

Tetik, D., Gica, S., Bestepe, E.E., Buyukavsar, A. & Gulec, H. (2020) Emotional Information Processing and Assessment of Cognitive Functions in Social Anxiety Disorder: An Event-Related Potential Study. Emotional Information Processing and Assessment of Cognitive Functions in Social Anxiety Disorder: An Event-Related Potential Study. Clinical EEG and Neuroscience. doi: 10.1177/1550059420981506. Online ahead of print.