Recent advances in the brain imaging of social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common and disabling anxiety disorders, yet much remains to be learned about its psychobiology. Although functional imaging has emphasized the role of the amygdala and other limbic structures in the neurobiology of SAD, structural and connectivity imaging techniques have emphasized the possibility of abnormalities in other regions and in whole-brain networks. The involvement of a broad range of networks in SAD is consistent with current understandings of the neuroanatomy of emotion and of social processing.