Perica Maria I, Ravindranath Orma, Calabro Finnegan J, Foran William, Luna Beatriz
Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Biol Psychiatry Glob Open Sci. 2021 Dec;1(4):283-290. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsgos.2021.06.010. Epub 2021 Jul 3.
By adolescence, foundational cognitive and affective neurobehavioral processes specialize based on environmental demands, such as stress, to determine the basis of adult trajectories. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has increased stress for everyone, particularly adolescents who face unique stressors such as restrictions in socialization and education. However, variability in brain processes supporting stress reactivity is not well understood. Here, we leverage pre-pandemic brain development studies to identify how maturity of prefrontal connectivity with the amygdala and hippocampus (HPC) is associated with response to COVID-19. We hypothesized that age-related changes in connectivity of affective and cognitive brain systems may underlie the emotional response of adolescents during the pandemic.
In this study, 10- to 31-year-old participants ( = 111) completed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans prior to the pandemic and then completed a questionnaire 9 months into the pandemic measuring worry, COVID-related stress, sadness, perceived stress, and positive affect. Associations between pairwise functional connectivity of HPC/amygdala subregions with prefrontal cortex subdivisions and affective reactivity during the pandemic were examined.
Regression analyses indicated that both worry and COVID-19-related stress increased with age (false discovery rate-corrected < .05). Furthermore, greater connectivity between the anterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex and posterior HPC was associated with greater worry and COVID-19-related stress ( < .05 corrected), which was primarily driven by individuals younger than 18 years.
Taken together, our results indicate that increases in stress reactivity to the COVID-19 pandemic across the transition to adulthood are driven by maturation of posterior HPC-ventromedial prefrontal cortex coupling, which integrates stress response and emotional memory processing.
到青春期时，基础认知和情感神经行为过程会根据环境需求（如压力）进行专门化，以确定成人发展轨迹的基础。持续的新冠疫情增加了每个人的压力，尤其是青少年，他们面临着社交和教育受限等独特的压力源。然而，支持应激反应的大脑过程的变异性尚未得到很好的理解。在此，我们利用疫情前的大脑发育研究来确定前额叶与杏仁核和海马体（HPC）的连接成熟度如何与对新冠疫情的反应相关。我们假设情感和认知大脑系统连接性的年龄相关变化可能是青少年在疫情期间情绪反应的基础。
在本研究中，10至31岁的参与者（n = 111）在疫情前完成了静息态功能磁共振成像扫描，然后在疫情9个月后完成了一份问卷，测量担忧、新冠相关压力、悲伤、感知压力和积极情绪。研究了HPC/杏仁核亚区域与前额叶皮质亚区域的成对功能连接与疫情期间情感反应之间的关联。
回归分析表明，担忧和新冠相关压力均随年龄增加（错误发现率校正p <.05）。此外，前内侧前额叶皮质与后HPC之间更强的连接与更多的担忧和新冠相关压力相关（校正p <.05），这主要由18岁以下的个体驱动。
综上所述，我们的结果表明，在向成年期过渡过程中，对新冠疫情应激反应的增加是由后HPC-内侧前额叶皮质耦合的成熟驱动的，这种耦合整合了应激反应和情绪记忆处理。
