Assessment of trait anxiety and prediction of changes in state anxiety using functional brain imaging: A test–retest study

Grit and the brain: spontaneous activity of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex mediates the relationship between the trait grit and academic performance

“…Higher fALFFs of the DMPFC in low-grit individuals and patients with self-regulation failures might reflect a compensatory mechanism to offset structural or functional defects (Yang et al , 2011; Bing et al ,2013; Orr et al , 2013), a larger effort to inhibit subcortical brain activities (Jiao et al , 2011; Liu et al , 2013), or an increased cortical modulation of neural activity (Xu et al , 2014; Zhou et al , 2014). This finding is also consistent with the findings in healthy individuals who showed higher DMPFC spontaneous activity and higher trait anxiety (Tian et al , 2016). Behaviorally, lower grit scores have been found to be related to higher scores in impulsiveness (Moshier et al , 2016), substance use behaviors (Guerrero et al , 2016), anxiety (Sheridan et al , 2015) and depression (Kleiman et al , 2013; Anestis and Selby, 2015).…”

The optimistic brain: Trait optimism mediates the influence of resting‐state brain activity and connectivity on anxiety in late adolescence

“…For example, a large number of fMRI studies have revealed that the anxiety levels of individuals with anxiety disorder were associated with the function of PFC regions such as the OFC, the medial PFC, the lateral PFC and the anterior cingulate cortex (Brühl, Delsignore, Komossa, & Weidt, a; Ding et al, ; Etkin & Wager, ; Qiu et al, ; Zhang et al, ). The role of PFC function in predicting anxiety has also been reported in subclinical or healthy populations (Kim et al, ; Tian et al, ; Xue, Lee, & Guo, ). Furthermore, the structural variances of the PFC regions (e.g., the OFC, the medial PFC, the lateral PFC and the anterior cingulate cortex) are found to be linked with anxious symptoms among both clinical and healthy samples (Blackmon et al, ; Brühl et al, b; Ducharme et al, ; Shang et al, ; Spampinato, Wood, De Simone, & Grafman, ; Syal et al, ; Talati et al, ).…”

Stress and the brain: Perceived stress mediates the impact of the superior frontal gyrus spontaneous activity on depressive symptoms in late adolescence

“…Considering that anxiety has been found to be related to perceived stress (Bergdahl & Bergdahl, 2002;Lee, 2012), depressive symptoms (Eysenck & Fajkowska, 2018), and resting-state brain activity (Tian et al, 2016;Xue, Lee, & Guo, 2018), we used the State Anxiety Inventory (SAI) (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1988) to exclude the potential impacts of anxiety on the relationships among perceived stress, regional fALFF, and depressive symptoms. The SAI includes 20 items (e.g., "I feel frightened" and "I feel confused") that are rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very much so).…”