Can social support figures enhance fear extinction in patients with social anxiety?

社会支持数字能否增强社交焦虑患者的恐惧消除？

• 批准号: 10554015
• 负责人: Naomi Ilana Eisenberger
• 金额: $ 8.27万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-12-01 至 2023-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10554015
• 关键词: Adult; Affect; Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders; Attenuated; Behavior; Caring; Clinical; Cues; Development; Diagnosis; Disease; Dropout; Extinction (Psychology); Female; Fright; Future; Generalized Anxiety Disorder; Health; Human; Image; Impairment; Individual; Intervention; Investigation; Learning; Life; Light; Literature; Mental Health; Methods; Neurobiology; Opioid; Outcome; Participant; Patient Dropouts; Patients; Personal Satisfaction; Phobias; Play; Population; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders; Prevention strategy; Preventive measure; Preventive treatment; Procedures; Process; Protocols documentation; Recording of previous events; Relapse; Research; Resources; Risk; Role; Route; Safety; Sampling; Security; Shock; Signal Transduction; Smiling; Social Anxiety Disorder; Social support; Suggestion; Support System; System; Testing; Therapeutic procedure; Translating; Work; anxious; base; conditioned fear; design; experience; generalized anxiety; improved; improved outcome; neurobiological mechanism; neuromechanism; novel; prevent; response; social anxiety; social attachment; successful intervention; therapy design; therapy outcome; tool

Project Summary/Abstract It is estimated that roughly one third of adults in the US will be affected by a fear-related disorder over the course of their lifetime. These disorders, including diagnoses such as generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder, are marked by disruptive fears that can interfere with daily life and have harmful long-term consequences on health and well-being. Yet, even the most successful treatment to date, exposure therapy (a set of procedures that employs fear extinction processes to reduce fear) has limited effects, with discomfort during therapy leading to drop-out and relapse remaining a common occurrence. Thus, investigation of methods to augment exposure therapy treatments and improve fear reduction strategies is critical for improving the well-being of individuals with fear-related disorders. Recent work has revealed that social support may represent one such method, demonstrating that social support reminders reduce the acquisition of fear and enhance the extinction of fear in healthy adults. These findings are unexpected, as they are in direct contrast with current views that all safety signals, including social support figures, are harmful during fear-reduction interventions. Thus, while current views would suggest that these cues enhance acquisition and reduce extinction, social support reminders in fact reduce acquisition and enhance extinction. This divergence may be explained by the crucial role of social support in human survival; specifically, the neurobiological mechanisms that have evolved to reinforce social bonds appear to overlap with the systems that support fear learning, making social support uniquely poised to reduce fear. These previous findings hint at the exciting possibility that social support may play an important role in improving outcomes for individuals with fear-related disorders. In particular, the presence of social support reminders (e.g., pictures) may enrich strategies to prevent fear acquisition in individuals at risk for developing disruptive fears and augment exposure therapy treatments, enhancing extinction outcomes. However, while the fear-reducing effects of social support have been demonstrated in healthy adults, these effects have never been tested in adults with fear-related disorders. Thus, the proposed studies will be the first to explore whether social support 1) reduces fear acquisition and 2) enhances fear extinction in adults with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and healthy controls. In the first study, we will test whether the presence of a social support image (vs. smiling stranger image) reduces acquisition in participants with SAD (n=50, 25 females) and healthy controls (n=50, 25 females). In the second study, we will test whether the presence of a social support image (vs. smiling stranger image) leads to enhanced extinction in participants diagnosed with SAD (n=50, 25 females) as well as healthy controls (n=50, 25 females). This work will establish whether the fear-reducing effects of social support extend beyond healthy adults to those with fear-related disorders, potentially shedding light on simple, inexpensive ways to attenuate the formation of new fears and augment current fear reduction treatments.

项目摘要/摘要 据估计，美国大约有三分之一的成年人会受到与恐惧有关的疾病的影响 他们一生的过程。这些疾病，包括诊断，例如广义焦虑症，社会障碍 焦虑症或创伤后应激障碍的特征是破坏性的恐惧，可能会干扰每天 生活并对健康和福祉产生有害的长期后果。但是，即使是最成功的 迄今为止的治疗，暴露疗法（一组采用恐惧灭绝过程以减少恐惧的程序） 效果有限，在治疗过程中不适，导致辍学和复发仍然是常见的 发生。因此，调查增加暴露疗法并改善恐惧的方法 减少策略对于改善与恐惧相关的疾病的人的福祉至关重要。 最近的工作表明，社会支持可能代表一种这样的方法，表明 社会支持提醒者减少了恐惧的获得，并增强了健康成年人恐惧的灭绝。 这些发现是出乎意料的，因为它们与当前观点形成鲜明对比，所有安全信号，包括 在减少恐惧干预措施中，社会支持数字是有害的。因此，虽然当前的观点会暗示 这些提示可以增强获取并减少灭绝，社会支持提醒实际上减少了收购 并增强灭绝。这种差异可以通过社会支持在人类中的关键作用来解释 生存；具体而言，演变以增强社会纽带的神经生物学机制似乎 与支持恐惧学习的系统重叠，使社会支持独特地旨在减少恐惧。 这些先前的发现暗示了社会支持可能在 改善与恐惧相关疾病的人的结果。特别是社会支持的存在 提醒（例如，图片）可能会丰富策略，以防止在有发展风险的个人中获得恐惧的恐惧 破坏性的恐惧和增加暴露疗法，增强灭绝结果。但是， 在健康的成年人中已经证明了社会支持的减少恐惧影响，这些影响从未 在患有恐惧相关疾病的成年人中进行了测试。因此，拟议的研究将是第一个探讨是否 社会支持1）减少恐惧的获取和2）增强社交焦虑症的成年人的恐惧灭绝 （悲伤）和健康的对照。在第一项研究中，我们将测试是否存在社会支持图像（VS。 微笑的陌生人图像）减少了患有SAD（n = 50，25女性）和健康对照的参与者的获取 （n = 50，25女性）。在第二项研究中，我们将测试是否存在社会支持图像（V。 微笑的陌生人形象）导致诊断为SAD（n = 50，25雌性）的参与者的灭绝增强 以及健康的对照（n = 50，25女性）。这项工作将确定社会的减少恐惧影响 支持超越健康的成年人，到患有恐惧疾病的人，可能会阐明简单， 降低新恐惧和增加当前恐惧治疗的廉价方法。