Chase Henry W, Hafeman Danella M, Ghane Merage, Skeba Alexander, Brady Tyler, Aslam Haris A, Stiffler Richelle, Bonar Lisa, Graur Simona, Bebko Genna, Bertocci Michele, Iyengar Satish, Phillips Mary L
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Department of Statistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Brain Behav. 2025 Apr;15(4):e70141. doi: 10.1002/brb3.70141.
The identification of relationships between individual differences in functional connectivity (FC) and behavior has been the focus of considerable investigation. Although emerging evidence has identified relationships between FC and cognitive performance, relationships between FC and measures of affect, including depressed mood, anhedonia, and anxiety, and decision-making style, including impulsivity and sensation seeking, appear to be more inconsistent across the literature. This may be due to low power, methodological differences across studies, including the use of global signal correction (GSR), or uncontrolled characteristics of the population.
Here, we evaluated measures of FC, regional variance, and global signal (GS) across six functional MRI (fMRI) sequences of different tasks and resting states and their relationship with individual differences in self-reported measures of symptoms of depression, anxiety, impulsivity, reward sensitivity, and sensation seeking, as well as demographic variables and acquisition order, within groups of distressed and healthy young adults (18-25 years old).
Adopting a training/testing sample structure to the analysis, we found no evidence of reproducible brain/behavior relationships despite identifying regions and connections that reflect reliable between-scan individual differences. However, summary measures of the GS were reproducibly associated with sex: The most consistent finding was an increase in low frequency variance of the blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal from all gray matter regions in males relative to females. Post hoc analysis of GS topography yielded sex differences in a number of regions, including cerebellum and putamen. In addition, effects of paradigm acquisition order were observed on GS measures, including an increase in BOLD signal variance across time. In an exploratory analysis, a specific relationship between sex and relative high-frequency within-scanner motion was observed.
Together, the findings suggest that FC relationships with affective measures may be inconsistent or modest, but that global phenomena related to state and individual differences can be robust and must be evaluated, particularly in studies of psychiatric disorders such as mood disorders or ADHD, which show sex differences.
识别功能连接性（FC）的个体差异与行为之间的关系一直是大量研究的重点。尽管新出现的证据已经确定了FC与认知表现之间的关系，但FC与情感测量指标（包括抑郁情绪、快感缺乏和焦虑）以及决策风格（包括冲动性和感觉寻求）之间的关系在文献中似乎更为不一致。这可能是由于功效不足、各研究方法上的差异（包括使用全局信号校正（GSR））或人群中未控制的特征。
在此，我们在苦恼的和健康的年轻成年人（18 - 25岁）组内，评估了不同任务和静息状态的六个功能磁共振成像（fMRI）序列中的FC测量指标、区域方差和全局信号（GS），以及它们与自我报告的抑郁、焦虑、冲动性、奖励敏感性和感觉寻求症状测量指标的个体差异，以及人口统计学变量和采集顺序之间的关系。
在分析中采用训练/测试样本结构，尽管我们识别出了反映可靠的扫描间个体差异的区域和连接，但未发现可重复的脑/行为关系的证据。然而，GS的汇总测量指标与性别可重复相关：最一致的发现是，相对于女性，男性所有灰质区域的血氧水平依赖（BOLD）信号低频方差增加。对GS地形图的事后分析在包括小脑和壳核在内的多个区域产生了性别差异。此外，观察到范式采集顺序对GS测量指标有影响，包括BOLD信号方差随时间增加。在探索性分析中，观察到性别与扫描仪内相对高频运动之间存在特定关系。
总之，研究结果表明FC与情感测量指标之间的关系可能不一致或不显著，但与状态和个体差异相关的全局现象可能很稳健，必须进行评估，特别是在诸如情绪障碍或注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）等精神疾病的研究中，这些疾病存在性别差异。
