Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Department of Psychology, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea.
Psychol Med. 2024 Jul;54(9):2299-2311. doi: 10.1017/S0033291724000473. Epub 2024 Mar 27.
Emotion regulation tendencies are well-known transdiagnostic markers of psychopathology, but their neurobiological foundations have mostly been examined within the theoretical framework of cortical-subcortical interactions.
We explored the connectome-wide neural correlates of emotion regulation tendencies using functional and diffusion magnetic resonance images of healthy young adults ( = 99; age 20-30; 28 females). We first tested the importance of considering both the functional and structural connectome through intersubject representational similarity analyses. Then, we employed a canonical correlation analysis between the functional-structural hybrid connectome and 23 emotion regulation strategies. Lastly, we sought to externally validate the results on a transdiagnostic adolescent sample ( = 93; age 11-19; 34 females).
First, interindividual similarity of emotion regulation profiles was significantly correlated with interindividual similarity of the functional-structural hybrid connectome, more so than either the functional or structural connectome. Canonical correlation analysis revealed that an adaptive-to-maladaptive gradient of emotion regulation tendencies mapped onto a specific configuration of covariance within the functional-structural hybrid connectome, which primarily involved functional connections in the motor network and the visual networks as well as structural connections in the default mode network and the subcortical-cerebellar network. In the transdiagnostic adolescent dataset, stronger functional signatures of the found network were associated with higher general positive affect through more frequent use of adaptive coping strategies.
Taken together, our study illustrates a gradient of emotion regulation tendencies that is best captured when simultaneously considering the functional and structural connections across the whole brain.
情绪调节倾向是精神病理学的一个众所周知的跨诊断标志物，但它们的神经生物学基础主要是在皮质-皮质下相互作用的理论框架内进行研究的。
我们使用健康年轻成年人（n = 99；年龄 20-30 岁；28 名女性）的功能和弥散磁共振成像来探索情绪调节倾向的连接组全脑神经相关性。我们首先通过主体间代表性相似性分析来测试同时考虑功能连接组和结构连接组的重要性。然后，我们在功能-结构混合连接组和 23 种情绪调节策略之间进行了典型相关分析。最后，我们试图在跨诊断青少年样本（n = 93；年龄 11-19 岁；34 名女性）上对结果进行外部验证。
首先，情绪调节特征的个体间相似性与功能-结构混合连接组的个体间相似性显著相关，比功能连接组或结构连接组的相关性更强。典型相关分析表明，情绪调节倾向的适应性-失调性梯度映射到功能-结构混合连接组内特定的协方差配置上，主要涉及运动网络和视觉网络的功能连接以及默认模式网络和皮质下-小脑网络的结构连接。在跨诊断青少年样本中，发现的网络的更强的功能特征与更高的一般积极情绪相关，因为通过更频繁地使用适应性应对策略。
总的来说，我们的研究说明了一种情绪调节倾向的梯度，当同时考虑整个大脑的功能和结构连接时，这种梯度可以得到最好的捕捉。
