The contributions of arousal and self-focused attention to avoidance in social anxiety.

BACKGROUND: Socially anxious individuals are theorized to avoid social cues and engage in safety behaviors to prevent negative evaluation, which prevents disconfirmation of social fears. Cognitive models propose that this avoidance is driven by (1) self-focused attention (SFA) and (2) physiological arousal. DESIGN: To examine these proposed mechanisms, we compared high socially anxious (HSA; n=29) and low socially anxious (LSA; n=28) participants on a view-time task involving faces. METHOD: Participants engaged in a task in which they viewed socially threatening (i.e., disgust, anger) and nonthreatening (i.e., happy, neutral) faces. RESULTS: Results revealed that HSA participants endorsed greater SFA during the view-time task and spent less time viewing angry, disgusted, and neutral facial expressions relative to LSA participants. Regression analyses revealed that arousal, as indexed by salivary α-amylase, was a unique predictor of increased face-viewing time among HSA participants. In contrast, arousal predicted decreased face-viewing time among LSA participants. CONCLUSIONS: Findings underscore the need for further investigation of avoidance mechanisms in social anxiety.

Cocaine and amphetamine related transcript (CART) inhibits context induced reinstatement of reward seeking.

We studied the role of cocaine and amphetamine related transcript (CART) in regulating context induced reinstatement (renewal) of reward seeking. Rats were trained to respond for alcoholic beer in context A before extinction in context B. Rats were tested for responding in context A (ABA) and context B (ABB). Intracerebroventricular (ICV) infusions of the active fragment CART55-102 but not the inactive fragment CART1-27 before test prevented ABA renewal of extinguished responding. ICV CART55-102 had no effect on responding in the extinction context (ABB). ICV CART55-102 also altered the profile of behavioral responses observed on test in the training (ABA) but not extinction (ABB) context. These results identify a novel role for CART in preventing reinstatement of reward seeking.