Abstract #0734

Structural and Functional Connectivity Changes in the Brain Associated with Shyness But Not with Social Anxiety

Xun Yang¹, Keith Maurice Kendrick², Taolin Chen¹, Bochao Cheng¹, Li Yao¹, Shiguang Li¹, Xiaoqi Huang¹, Qiyong Gong¹

¹Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China; ²Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

How to distinguish shyness from social anxiety and trait anxiety has been of great concern to both clinicians and researchers. We assume that shyness should be contributed to by structural and functional changes in the brain and addressed this issue by using voxel-based sMRI and rfMRI to test correlations between brain structure, functional connectivity and shyness and social anxiety. Our results have indeed confirmed the presence of extensive structural and functional connectivity changes in cortical and limbic regions involved with processing social stimuli in shy individuals. And these changes are not associated with social or trait anxiety despite both having some behavioral correlation with shyness.