Restricted autonomic flexibility in children with social phobia (original) (raw)
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Journal of affective disorders, 2015
Psychophysiological theories suggest that individuals with anxiety disorders may evidence inflexibility in their autonomic activity at rest and when responding to stressors. In addition, theories of social anxiety disorder, in particular, highlight the importance of physical symptoms. Research on autonomic activity in childhood (social) anxiety disorders, however, is scarce and has produced inconsistent findings, possibly because of methodological limitations. The present study aimed to account for limitations of previous studies and measured respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and heart rate (HR) using Actiheart heart rate monitors and software (Version 4) during rest and in response to a social and a non-social stressor in 60 anxious (30 socially anxious and 30 'other' anxious), and 30 nonanxious sex-and age-matched 7-12 year olds. In addition, the effect of state anxiety during the tasks was explored. No group differences at rest or in response to stress were found. Import...
Developmental and contextual influences on autonomic reactivity in young children
Developmental Psychobiology, 2003
Studies of cardiovascular reactivity in young children have generally employed integrated, physiologically complex measures, such as heart rate and blood pressure, which are subject to the multiple influences of factors such as blood volume, hematologic status, thermoregulation, and autonomic nervous system (ANS) tone. Reactivity studies in children have rarely employed more differentiated, proximal measures of autonomic function capable of discerning the independent effects of sympathetic and parasympathetic responses. We describe 1) the development, validity, and reliability of a psychobiology protocol assessing autonomic reactivity to challenge in 3-to 8-year-old children; 2) the influences of age, gender, and study context on autonomic measures; and 3) the distributions of reactivity measures in a normative sample of children and the prevalences of discrete autonomic profiles. Preejection period (PEP) and respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA) were measured as indices of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system reactivity, respectively, and autonomic profiles were created to offer summative indices of PEP and RSA response. Results confirmed the protocol's validity and reliability, and showed differences in autonomic reactivity by age and study context, but not by gender. The studies' findings offer guidelines for future research on autonomic reactivity in middle childhood and support the feasibility of examining sympathetic and parasympathetic responses to challenge in 3-to 8-yearold children. ß 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 42: 64-78, 2003.
Psychiatry Research, 2010
The present study investigated whether autonomic flexibility predicted future anxiety levels in adolescent boys and girls. This study is part of the TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS), a prospective cohort study of Dutch adolescents. The current study included a subsample of 965 individuals. Measures of autonomic flexibility, i.e., heart rate (HR) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), were determined during the first assessment wave (T1: participants 10-12 years old). Self-reported anxiety was assessed at the first and second assessment wave (T2: participants 12-14 years old). Possible gender differences and cooccurring depressive problems were examined. In girls, low RSA predicted anxiety levels 2 years later. In boys, no associations between HR and RSA and future anxiety were found. We conclude that in adolescent girls from the general population, signs of reduced autonomic flexibility (i.e., low RSA) predict future anxiety levels. Since the effect size was small, at this point, RSA reactivity alone cannot be used to identify individuals at risk for anxiety, but should be regarded as one factor within a large group of risk factors. However, if the present findings are replicated in clinical studies, intervention programmesin the futureaimed at normalising autonomic functioning may be helpful.
Subjective, Autonomic, and Endocrine Reactivity during Social Stress in Children with Social Phobia
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 2012
Reports of exaggerated anxiety and physiological hyperreactivity to social-evaluative situations are characteristic of childhood social phobia (SP). However, laboratory research on subjective, autonomic and endocrine functioning in childhood SP is scarce, inconsistent and limited by small sample sizes, limited breadth of measurements, and the use of non-standardized stressor tasks. We exposed 8-12-year-old children with DSM-IV SP (n=41) and matched healthy control children (HC; n=40) to the Trier Social Stress Test for Children (TSST-C) while measuring subjective anxiety, heart rate (HR) and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) as well as salivary cortisol. The SP children showed heightened reactivity to the TSST-C on subjective anxiety compared to the HC children but not a heightened reactivity in HR, sAA or cortisol. However, the SP children showed chronically elevated HR levels throughout the whole laboratory session. Whereas subjective anxiety seems to respond specifically to social-evaluative stress in childhood SP, HR levels may be chronically elevated suggesting a more generalized autonomic hyperreactivity.
Autonomic Dysfunction in Preschool Children with Neurotic Disorders
Journal of Intellectual Disability - Diagnosis and Treatment, 2020
In the last decades of the 21st century, the problem of a significant increase in the number of children with disorders in mental and somatic development has become particularly acute. Often there are neurotic conditions caused by the influence of various psycho-traumatic factors: the growth of scientific and technological progress and related changes in all areas of human life activity. In this regard, shifts occurred in the structure of the incidence among the population towards an increase in the proportion of diseases associated with nervous and psychic overstrain. One of the most vulnerable age groups is children of preschool and primary school age. Untimely diagnosed neurotic disorders in children, as a rule, turn into protracted forms of neurotic conditions and subsequently become chronic. This, of course, affects the adaptation of the individual in society and the further quality of life. This study, aimed at assessing autonomic regulation in preschool children with different psychological status, allowed to reveal the activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic link of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) by the method of cardiointervalography according to R.M. Baevskii. We examined 127 children aged 4-5.5 years old. The average statistical indicators characterizing the regulation of heart rate (HR, HF, LF, VLF, LF/HF, TP, SI) in preschool children in various groups (neurosis, pre-neurosis, anxiety, and normal) were determined. The study revealed changes in the regulation of heart rhythm in children with neurotic disorders, which indicates an increase in the influence of the sympathetic circuit of autonomic regulation and a decrease in parasympathetic influences. Overstrain of vegetative centres in children with neurosis and pre-neurotic conditions is determined by high psychoemotional stresses.
Autonomic changes as reaction to experimental social stress in an inpatient psychosomatic cohort
Frontiers in Psychiatry
ObjectivesPatients with psychosomatic disorders suffer from social isolation that might further lead to destabilization and exacerbation of bodily symptoms via autonomic pathways. We aimed to investigate the influence of controlled social stress (model of social ostracism) on the autonomic nerve system (ANS) in an inpatient cohort with psychosomatic disorders.MethodsWe examined heart rate variability (HRV), skin conductance (SC) and skin temperature (ST) as well as ECG-derived respiration rate (EDR) and subjective reports on stress during exposure to experimental social stress (cyberball game). Data were collected from 123 participants (f:m = 88:35, 42.01 ± 13.54 years) on admission and upon discharge from the university psychosomatic clinic. All data were recorded during baseline, inclusion and exclusion phases of the cyberball game as well as during the recovery phase.ResultsWe found significant changes between admission and discharge with a decline in parasympathetic-related HRV ...
Autonomic stress response modes and ambulatory heart rate level and variability.
Journal of …, 2008
The major goals of this study were (1) to determine consistency of autonomic response modes to different laboratory stressors, and (2) to evaluate the strength of the association between autonomic response modes and ambulatory heart rate and variability. The sample consisted of 45 healthy participants. Parasympathetic (PNS) and sympathetic (SNS) reactivity to and recovery from laboratory stressors (handgrip, logical-mathematical, mirror-tracing, and rumination tasks) were estimated by high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), preejection period (PEP), and baroreflex sensitivity (BRS). Ambulatory HR was measured for 24 h on a work and a nonwork day, counterbalanced. As BRS was less reliable compared to PEP and HF-HRV, the latter two parameters were selected for the computation of SNS/PNS patterns. Autonomic modes were consistent across tasks and more stable during the recovery periods. Moreover, recovery appeared to be sensitive to the emotionality of tasks. Reactivity and recovery patterns differed as a function of gender, with women showing higher vagal tone at baseline, higher HR reactivity to the logical task, greater BRS decrease during the rumination task, and a larger decrease in vagal tone during recovery after the rumination task. After controlling for gender and baseline HR and variability, autonomic profiles during reactivity and recovery periods captured substantially different ambulatory information. Specifically, autonomic profiles during reactivity significantly predicted ambulatory HR level during waking hours, whereas autonomic profile during recovery was linked with ambulatory HRV. Coactivation of SNS and PNS activity was associated with the highest ambulatory HR levels and variability. Findings from the laboratory were consistent with a dimensional autonomic model viewing SNS and PNS contributions to heart rate on orthogonal axes and individual stress response stereotypy. Laboratory task-related autonomic reactivity and recovery may reflect parallel differences in HR level and variability in everyday life. that autonomic control of the heart cannot be viewed adequately by a bipolar model of SNS/PNS control. They developed a model of autonomic control in which response patterns are represented as vectors on an autonomic space characterized by orthogonal
Clinical and autonomic functions: A study of childhood anxiety disorders
Annals of Saudi Medicine, 2011
T he aggregate anxiety disorders constitute the set of most prevalent psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents, with estimates of point prevalence ranging from 3% to 13%. 1 Generalized anxiety disorder has been noted to be common in children and adolescents, with a prevalence of 3.6% to 7.3% in a community sample. 1 Studies conducted in the USA and Europe, including Scandinavia, largely support the view that social phobia ranks among the most prevalent of the anxiety disorders in the general population. 2 Estimates range from fairly low lifetime rates of 1% to 4% in studies conducted in the early 1980s to considerably higher estimates of 7% to 16% in later studies utilizing DSM-III-R criteria. Anxious children often present with physical complaints rather than overt worries
PLoS ONE, 2013
Assessment of anxiety symptoms in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a challenging task due to the symptom overlap between the two conditions as well as the difficulties in communication and awareness of emotions in ASD. This motivates the development of a physiological marker of anxiety in ASD that is independent of language and does not require observation of overt behaviour. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of using indicators of autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity for this purpose. Specially, the objectives of the study were to 1) examine whether or not anxiety causes significant measurable changes in indicators of ANS in an ASD population, and 2) characterize the pattern of these changes in ASD. We measured three physiological indicators of the autonomic nervous system response (heart rate, electrodermal activity, and skin temperature) during a baseline (movie watching) and anxiety condition (Stroop task) in a sample of typically developing children (n = 17) and children with ASD (n = 12). The anxiety condition caused significant changes in heart rate and electrodermal activity in both groups, however, a differential pattern of response was found between the two groups. In particular, the ASD group showed elevated heart rate during both baseline and anxiety conditions. Elevated and blunted phasic electrodermal activity were found in the ASD group during baseline and anxiety conditions, respectively. Finally, the ASD group did not show the typical decrease in skin temperature in response to anxiety. These results suggest that 1) signals of the autonomic nervous system may be used as indicators of anxiety in children with ASD, and 2) ASD may be associated with an atypical autonomic response to anxiety that is most consistent with sympathetic over-arousal and parasympathetic under-arousal.