Increased threat learning after social isolation in human adolescents.

The Royal Society https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.240101 R Soc Open Sci 2024-11-13T01:01:38Z 2024-11 2024-01-17 2024-11-13T01:01:38Z

Peer reviewed: True
Publication status: Published
Funder: Jacobs Foundation; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003986
Funder: Medical Research Council; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000265
Funder: Gates Cambridge Trust; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100005370
Funder: Wellspring Foundation
Funder: Wellcome Trust; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010269
Funder: Cambridge Philosophical Society; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100013858
In animal models, social isolation impacts threat responding and threat learning, especially during development. This study examined the effects of acute social isolation on threat learning in human adolescents using an experimental, within-participant design. Participants aged 16-19 years underwent a session of complete isolation and a separate session of isolation with virtual social interactions, counterbalanced between participants, as well as a baseline session. At baseline and following each isolation session, participants reported their psychological state and completed a threat learning task in which self-report ratings and physiological responses to learned threat and safety cues were measured. Threat learning increased after both isolation sessions in two ways. First, participants found the learned threat cue more anxiety-inducing and unpleasant after isolation compared with baseline. Second, during threat extinction, electrodermal activity was partially elevated after isolation compared with baseline. Further, the results suggested that isolation influenced threat learning through state loneliness. Threat learning is central to threat-related disorders including anxiety, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and our findings suggest that isolation and loneliness in adolescence might increase vulnerability to the emergence of these disorders through increased threat learning.

adolescence; anxiety; loneliness; social isolation; threat learning; article

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