Loud and angry: sound intensity modulates amygdala activation to angry voices in social anxiety disorder

Angry expressions of both voices and faces represent disorder-relevant stimuli in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Although individuals with SAD show greater amygdala activation to angry faces, previous work has failed to find comparable effects for angry voices. Here, we investigated whether voice sound-intensity, a modulator of a voice’s threat-relevance, affects brain responses to angry prosody in SAD. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore brain responses to voices varying in sound intensity and emotional prosody in SAD patients and healthy controls (HCs). Angry and neutral voices were presented either with normal or high sound amplitude, while participants had to decide upon the speaker’s gender. Loud vs normal voices induced greater insula activation, and angry vs neutral prosody greater orbitofrontal cortex activation in SAD as compared with HC subjects. Importantly, an interaction of sound intensity, prosody and group was found in the insula and the amygdala. In particular, the amygdala showed greater activation to loud angry voices in SAD as compared with HC subjects. This finding demonstrates a modulating role of voice sound-intensity on amygdalar hyperresponsivity to angry prosody in SAD and suggests that abnormal processing of interpersonal threat signals in amygdala extends beyond facial expressions in SAD.