(PS3-D77) The Relationship Between Amygdala Reactivity to Social Rejection and Behavior During a Real-world Task with Potential Social Threat

Background

fMRI studies suggest that the amygdala plays an important role in the affective processing of social interactions, with girls showing greater reactivity (i.e., amygdala activation) than boys when confronted with social rejection. Enhanced emotional reactivity to peer feedback may interfere with one’s ability to respond adaptively during potentially threatening social situations. This study aimed to assess whether amygdala activation in the scanner during a rejection-oriented task was related to observable behaviors during a potentially threatening task in the lab in a sample of adolescent girls. We hypothesized that amygdala activity during social rejection would be positively related to anxiety and avoidance, and negatively related to performance, during a behaviorally coded speech task. 

Methods

125 adolescent females (ages 11-13), assessed as either high or low on shy/fearful temperament according to the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire (EATQ-R), completed the Chatroom Interact Task in the scanner. This task uses a simulated online chatroom where participants select five peers with whom they might enjoy interacting. Two types of trials were used for the current study; rejection and control. During rejection trials, subjects selected one of two faces on the screen that they would like to interact with and then were shown a large “X” over one face in ⅔ of trials, signifying they were not mutually selected. During control trials, two faces were shown on the screen and participants were asked to select the face that had a dot on it. Parameter estimates were extracted for the right and left amygdala for the rejection > control contrast. Participants also completed a lab-based speech task in front of two judges, who were confederates. One of them smiled throughout the speech while the other maintained a neutral facial expression and engaged in potentially threatening behaviors such as looking around the room and fidgeting in their seat. Videotapes of the speeches were behaviorally coded by trained observers for anxiety, avoidance, and performance. 

Results

The hypothesis was not supported. Correlational analyses (controlling for temperament) revealed no significant associations between amygdala reactivity to rejection and behavior during the speech (p’s > .37)

Conclusions

The nature of the speech task requires individuals to engage the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in order to complete the task at hand, and participants may have varied in their ability to bring those regulatory abilities online in the face of emotional reactivity. Our neural measure of emotional reactivity did not account for PFC engagement, which may explain the nonsignificant findings. Future studies might explore associations between PFC-amygdala connectivity and behavior during real-world experiences of potential social threat. The relationship between amygdala reactivity and real-world behavior may also vary as a function of individual differences, suggesting that future work might explore the potential moderating effects of temperament and anxiety.