Radioactive brain

Scientists see physical evidence of social anxiety disorder.

A neuroimaging study provided physical evidence of the biochemical differences in the brains of 12 people with ‘Social Anxiety Disorder’.

According to Social Anxiety UK, millions of people around the world suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder (also known as Social Phobia) and related conditions, and is the third most common psychiatric disorder after depression and alcoholism. The organisation describe the disorder in it's simplest terms as a fear of people: of being around, having to interact with, being watched, criticised or judged negatively by, other human beings.

To uncover the causes of the condition, the medical scientists from The Netherlands used single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) to study the densities of the elements serotonin and dopamine - both neurotransmitters in the brain. The team injected a radioactive compound that binds to the neurotransmitters in the brains of 12 people diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and a control group of 12 healthy people of the same age and sex.

The group of people diagnosed with the disorder has not taken any medication to treat it.

SPECT results

Once the compound was administered, the tomography showed that the activity in the serotonin and dopamine regions indicated a greater level of disordered function.

"Our study provides direct evidence for the involvement of the brain's dopaminergic system in social anxiety disorder in patients who had no prior exposure to medication," said Dr. van der Wee, at the department of psychiatry and the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition at the Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. "It demonstrates that social anxiety has a physical, brain dependent component."

If the neurotransmitters, serotonin and dopamine that transfer signals to one another, are out of balance, messages cannot get through the brain properly. This can alter the way the brain reacts to normal social situations, leading to anxiety.

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