Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Laboratory of NeuroGenetics, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
Aggress Behav. 2019 May;45(3):310-318. doi: 10.1002/ab.21820. Epub 2019 Jan 30.
Amongst a number of negative life sequelae associated with childhood adversity is the later expression of a higher dispositional tendency to experience anger and frustration to a wide range of situations (i.e., trait anger). We recently reported that an association between childhood adversity and trait anger is moderated by individual differences in both threat-related amygdala activity and executive control-related dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity, wherein individuals with relatively low amygdala and high dlPFC activity do not express higher trait anger even when having experienced childhood adversity. Here, we examine possible structural correlates of this functional dynamic using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data from 647 young adult men and women volunteers. Specifically, we tested whether the degree of white matter microstructural integrity as indexed by fractional anisotropy modulated the association between childhood adversity and trait anger. Our analyses revealed that higher microstructural integrity of multiple pathways was associated with an attenuated link between childhood adversity and adult trait anger. Amongst these pathways was the uncinate fasciculus (UF; ΔR = 0.01), which not only provides a major anatomical link between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex but also is associated with individual differences in regulating negative emotion through top-down cognitive reappraisal. These findings suggest that higher microstructural integrity of distributed white matter pathways including but not limited to the UF may represent an anatomical foundation serving to buffer against the expression of childhood adversity as later trait anger, which is itself associated with multiple negative health outcomes.
在与儿童逆境相关的许多负面生活后果中，有一种是后来表现出对广泛情境（即特质愤怒）产生愤怒和挫折的更高倾向性。我们最近报告称，儿童逆境与特质愤怒之间的关联受到与威胁相关的杏仁核活动和与执行控制相关的背外侧前额叶皮层（dlPFC）活动个体差异的调节，其中杏仁核活动相对较低而 dlPFC 活动较高的个体即使经历过儿童逆境，也不会表现出更高的特质愤怒。在这里，我们使用来自 647 名年轻成年男性和女性志愿者的扩散磁共振成像数据来检查这种功能动态的可能结构相关性。具体来说，我们测试了以各向异性分数为指标的白质微观结构完整性的程度是否调节了儿童逆境与特质愤怒之间的关联。我们的分析表明，多个通路的微观结构完整性越高，与儿童逆境和成人特质愤怒之间的联系就越弱。这些通路中包括钩束（UF；ΔR = 0.01），它不仅提供了杏仁核和前额叶皮层之间的主要解剖学联系，而且与通过自上而下的认知重评来调节负面情绪的个体差异有关。这些发现表明，包括但不限于 UF 的分布式白质通路的更高微观结构完整性可能代表一种解剖学基础，有助于缓冲儿童逆境后期表现为特质愤怒的表达，而特质愤怒本身与多种负面健康结果有关。
