Amygdala habituation and uncinate fasciculus connectivity in adolescence: A multi-modal approach

Abstract

Despite prior extensive investigations of the interactions between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, few studies have simultaneously considered activation and structural connectivity in this circuit, particularly as it pertains to adolescent socioemotional development. The current multi-modal study delineated the correspondence between uncinate fasciculus (UF) connectivity and amygdala habituation in a large adolescent sample that was drawn from a population-based sample. We then examined the influence of demographic variables (age, gender, and pubertal status) on the relation between UF connectivity and amygdala habituation. 106 participants (15-17 years) completed DTI and an fMRI emotional face processing task. Left UF fractional anisotropy was associated with left amygdala habituation to fearful faces, suggesting that increased structural connectivity of the UF may facilitate amygdala regulation. Pubertal status moderated this structure-function relation, such that the association was stronger in those who were less mature. Therefore, UF connectivity may be particularly important for emotion regulation during early puberty. This study is the first to link structural and functional limbic circuitry in a large adolescent sample with substantial representation of ethnic minority participants, providing a more comprehensive understanding of socioemotional development in an understudied population.

WITHDRAWN:Childhood violence exposure and social deprivation predict adolescent amygdala-orbitofrontal cortex white matter connectivity

“…Informed consent was obtained from the parent/legal guardian for both their participation and their teen’s participation and informed assent from the adolescent. These data overlap with prior work from our research group: fMRI and dMRI data, but no environmental data ( Goetschius et al, 2019 ; Hein et al, 2018 ); violence exposure and social deprivation composites, but no MRI ( Peckins et al, 2019 ).…”

“…When not weighted (as here), given the oversample for non-marital births, the sample represents mostly low-income, urban families. Given the demographics and sample sizes in Detroit, Toledo and Chicago ( Hein et al, 2018 ), a majority of the sample identified as African American. FFCWS families were interviewed at the birth of the focal child, and again when the child was 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15 years of age.…”

“…During fMRI data collection, participants completed an event-related emotional faces task in which they were instructed to identify to the gender of emotional faces displaying one of five emotions: fearful, happy, sad, angry, neutral. Details of the task are in the Appendix B in Supplementary materials (and see Goetschius et al, 2019 ; Hein et al, 2018 ). Participants who achieved less than 70 % accuracy on the Faces Task were excluded (N = 15).…”

“…Head movement was minimized through: (a) instructions to the participant and (b) padding and pillows placed around the head, which are well-tolerated, yet limit motion. These procedures have been outlined in previous work ( Goetschius et al, 2019 ; Hein et al, 2018 ).…”

Oxytocinergic modulation of threat-specific amygdala sensitization in humans is critically mediated by serotonergic mechanisms

“…The amygdala exhibits rapid adaptations to repeated presentation of salient stimuli, including facial expressions [25] and these changes might be a more reliable marker of amygdala function as assessed by fMRI activation [31,32,68,69]. Desensitization (habituation) of amygdala responses has been most consistently reported, but sensitization may also occur depending on the amygdala subregion and with repeated presentation of particularly salient or aversive stimuli [70].…”