Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium.
Brain Imaging Behav. 2017 Dec;11(6):1604-1615. doi: 10.1007/s11682-016-9642-2.
Anxiety and depression are associated with altered communication within global brain networks and between these networks and the amygdala. Functional connectivity studies demonstrate an effect of anxiety and depression on four critical brain networks involved in top-down attentional control (fronto-parietal network; FPN), salience detection and error monitoring (cingulo-opercular network; CON), bottom-up stimulus-driven attention (ventral attention network; VAN), and default mode (default mode network; DMN). However, structural evidence on the white matter (WM) connections within these networks and between these networks and the amygdala is lacking. The current study in a large healthy sample (n = 483) observed that higher trait anxiety-depression predicted lower WM integrity in the connections between amygdala and specific regions of the FPN, CON, VAN, and DMN. We discuss the possible consequences of these anatomical alterations for cognitive-affective functioning and underscore the need for further theory-driven research on individual differences in anxiety and depression on brain structure.
焦虑和抑郁与大脑全局网络内部以及这些网络与杏仁核之间的交流改变有关。功能连接研究表明，焦虑和抑郁对四个关键的大脑网络有影响，这些网络涉及自上而下的注意力控制（额顶网络；FPN）、突显检测和错误监控（扣带回-脑岛网络；CON）、自下而上的刺激驱动注意力（腹侧注意网络；VAN）和默认模式（默认模式网络；DMN）。然而，这些网络内部以及这些网络与杏仁核之间的白质（WM）连接的结构证据尚缺乏。本研究在一个大型健康样本（n=483）中观察到，特质焦虑-抑郁程度越高，预示着杏仁核与 FPN、CON、VAN 和 DMN 特定区域之间的连接的 WM 完整性越低。我们讨论了这些解剖结构改变对认知-情感功能的可能影响，并强调需要进一步开展基于理论的研究，以了解焦虑和抑郁个体差异对大脑结构的影响。
