Giglberger Marina, Peter Hannah L, Henze Gina-Isabelle, Bärtl Christoph, Konzok Julian, Kirsch Peter, Kudielka Brigitte M, Kreuzpointner Ludwig, Wüst Stefan
Department of Psychology, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Research Division of Mind and Brain, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy CCM, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität Zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany.
J Neurosci Res. 2025 Jan;103(1):e70019. doi: 10.1002/jnr.70019.
Anxiety and depression disorders show high prevalence rates, and stress is a significant risk factor for both. However, studies investigating the interplay between anxiety, depression, and stress regulation in the brain are scarce. The present manuscript included 124 law students from the LawSTRESS project. Anxiety and depression symptoms were assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and psychosocial stress was induced with the imaging stress paradigm ScanSTRESS. Anxiety, but not depression scores, were significantly related to neural stress responses in a striato-limbic cluster. Moreover, relative to women, men showed stronger associations between anxiety scores and activation in striatal and temporal clusters. A bifactor model of the HADS suggested a general factor characterized by tension, nervousness, and cheerlessness, which was associated with activation changes in a similar but more circumscribed cluster than anxiety. In the LawSTRESS project, the HADS was assessed at five sampling points (1 year, 3 months, 1 week prior exam, 1 week, and 1 month thereafter), and thus an exploratory trajectory analysis could be performed. It confirmed the relationship between anxiety scores and striatal stress responses at baseline but revealed no predictive value of the neural measure across the sampling points. Our results suggest that-in healthy young participants-neural acute psychosocial stress responses in striato-limbic structures are associated with anxiety, supporting the assumption that these regions are related to individual differences in vulnerability to stress-related disorders. A correlation with depression scores could not be found, and possible explanations are discussed.
焦虑症和抑郁症的患病率很高，压力是这两种疾病的重要风险因素。然而，研究大脑中焦虑、抑郁和压力调节之间相互作用的研究却很少。本手稿纳入了来自LawSTRESS项目的124名法律系学生。使用医院焦虑抑郁量表（HADS）评估焦虑和抑郁症状，并采用成像应激范式ScanSTRESS诱导心理社会压力。焦虑评分而非抑郁评分与纹状体-边缘簇中的神经应激反应显著相关。此外，相对于女性，男性的焦虑评分与纹状体和颞叶簇中的激活之间的关联更强。HADS的双因素模型表明存在一个以紧张、神经质和郁郁寡欢为特征的一般因素，该因素与一个与焦虑相似但范围更有限的簇中的激活变化相关。在LawSTRESS项目中，在五个采样点（1年、3个月、考试前1周、1周以及之后1个月）评估了HADS，因此可以进行探索性轨迹分析。它证实了基线时焦虑评分与纹状体应激反应之间的关系，但未揭示神经测量在各个采样点的预测价值。我们的结果表明，在健康的年轻参与者中，纹状体-边缘结构中的神经急性心理社会应激反应与焦虑有关，支持了这些区域与应激相关障碍易感性个体差异相关的假设。未发现与抑郁评分的相关性，并讨论了可能的解释。
