Cortisol-induced enhancement of emotional face processing in social phobia depends on symptom severity and motivational context
Section snippets
Participants
Twenty-one unmedicated patients with SAD participated in the experiment for financial compensation (i.e., €40 and traveling expenses). Demographic variables and group characteristics are presented in Table 1. Patients were recruited at the outpatient anxiety departments of three community mental health centers and through advertisements on Internet forums. Inclusion criteria were: a primary diagnosis of generalized SAD (according to DSM-IV criteria) and a total score >60 at the Liebowitz Social
Cortisol and subjective measures
Salivary cortisol (nmol/L) measures (see Table 2) were skewed and therefore log transformed before statistical analysis. The results of a 2 × 4 ANOVA rm with condition (placebo, cortisol) and time (T0, T1, T2, T3) yielded a significant interaction of condition × time (F(3,48) = 78.47, p = .000, η2 = 0.83). This result indicates that, as expected, salivary cortisol levels did not differ between conditions before capsule intake (T0: F(1,17) = .01, p = .92), but were significantly increased after cortisol
Discussion
The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of cortisol administration on threat processing and approach and avoidance behavior in a clinical sample of patients with generalized social anxiety disorder. In line with earlier findings of a very similar study with high anxious healthy participants (van Peer et al., 2007) we expected relatively increased avoidance (i.e., slower approach or faster avoidance responses) and enhanced processing (i.e., increased early (P150) and later
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Mark Rotteveel for the response device and task software; Miranda van den Berge, Laila Benbrahim, Liesbeth van Beemen, Janne Hofmeester, and the therapists from the anxiety unit of PsyQ, The Hague and Rivierduinen, Leiden, for their assistance in patient recruitment; the lab assistants of the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology of the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) for their assistance in data collection; Cor Kramer and Robert Reijntjes for the technical support;
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