Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University Hospital Muenster, Muenster, Germany.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2019 Jun 15;40(9):2723-2735. doi: 10.1002/hbm.24555. Epub 2019 Mar 4.
The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and the laterobasal nucleus (LB), centromedial nucleus (CM), and superficial nucleus (SF) of the amygdala form an interconnected dynamical system, whose combined activity mediates a variety of behavioral and autonomic responses in reaction to homeostatic challenges. Although previous research provided deeper insight into the structural and functional connections between these nuclei, studies investigating their resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) connectivity were solely based on undirected connectivity measures. Here, we used high-quality data of 391 subjects from the Human Connectome Project to estimate the effective connectivity (EC) between the BNST, the LB, CM, and SF through spectral dynamic causal modeling, the relation of the EC estimates with age and sex as well as their stability over time. Our results reveal a time-stable asymmetric EC structure with positive EC between all amygdala nuclei, which strongly inhibited the BNST while the BNST exerted positive influence onto all amygdala nuclei. Simulation of the impulse response of the estimated system showed that this EC structure shapes partially antagonistic (out of phase) activity flow between the BNST and amygdala nuclei. Moreover, the BNST-LB and BNST-CM EC parameters were less negative in males. In conclusion, our data points toward partially separated information processing between BNST and amygdala nuclei in the resting-state.
终纹床核（BNST）和杏仁核的外侧基底核（LB）、中央核（CM）和浅层核（SF）构成一个相互关联的动力系统，其联合活动介导了各种自主和行为反应，以应对稳态挑战。尽管先前的研究深入了解了这些核之间的结构和功能连接，但研究其静息状态功能磁共振成像（fMRI）连接的研究仅基于无向连接测量。在这里，我们使用来自人类连接组计划的 391 名受试者的高质量数据，通过谱动态因果建模来估计 BNST、LB、CM 和 SF 之间的有效连接（EC），估计 EC 与年龄和性别的关系以及它们随时间的稳定性。我们的结果揭示了一个时间稳定的不对称 EC 结构，所有杏仁核核之间存在正 EC，强烈抑制 BNST，而 BNST 对所有杏仁核核施加正影响。估计系统的脉冲响应模拟表明，这种 EC 结构部分地塑造了 BNST 和杏仁核核之间的拮抗（相位相反）活动流。此外，BNST-LB 和 BNST-CM 的 EC 参数在男性中不那么负。总之，我们的数据表明，在静息状态下 BNST 和杏仁核核之间存在部分分离的信息处理。
