Diffusion Tensor Imaging Studies on Chinese Patients with Social Anxiety Disorder

The aim of this study was to explore white-matter disruption in social anxiety disorder (SAD) patients by using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and to investigate the relationship between cerebral abnormalities and the severity of the symptoms. Eighteen SAD patients and age- and gender-matched healthy controls were recruited. DTI scans were performed to measure fractional anisotropy (FA) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) for each subject. We used voxel-based analysis to determine the differences of FA and ADC values between the two groups with two-sample t-tests. The SAD patient showed significantly decreased FA values in the white matter of the left insula, left inferior frontal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus, and left inferior parietal gyrus and increased ADC values in the left insula, bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, and left inferior parietal gyrus. In SAD patients, we observed a significant negative correlation between FA values in the left insula and the total LSAS scores and a positive correlation between the ADC values in the left inferior frontal gyrus and the total LSAS scores. Above results suggested that white-matter microstructural changes might contribute to the neuropathology of SAD.