Directed threat imagery in generalized anxiety disorder

Buff, Christine; Schmidt, Claudia C.; Brinkmann, Leonie; Gathmann, Bettina; Tupak, Sara V.; Straube, Thomas

doi:10.1017/s0033291717001957

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…Previous neuroimaging studies have suggested that the thalamus plays an important role not only in the filtering of sensory information, but also involved in the process of senior cognition and emotion regulation ( Herrero et al, 2002 ; Boatman and Kim, 2006 ; Haber and Calzavara, 2009 ). Previous findings indicate elevated activity in the thalamus in GAD patients relative to HC during directed threat imagery ( Buff et al, 2017 ). Furthermore, increased connectivity between amygdala and thalamus was predicted by the amplified physiological responses to the induction ( Makovac et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…The GAD is highly prevalent in the general population. Patients with GAD often suffer from a variety of anxiety-related physical symptoms like difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, and disturbed sleep which impair their quality of life and social functioning ( Paulus and Stein, 2010 ; Liu et al, 2015b ; Li Y. et al, 2016 ; Buff et al, 2017 ; Moon and Jeong, 2017 ). To improve the level of both basic GAD research and its clinical diagnosis, it is essential to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms of GAD and explore a valid and objective biomarker to distinguish patients with GAD from HC.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aberrant Functional Network Connectivity as a Biomarker of Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Qiao

Cao

et al. 2017

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Neural disruptions during emotion regulation are common of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Identifying distinct functional and effective connectivity patterns in GAD may provide biomarkers for their diagnoses. This study aims to investigate the differences of features of brain network connectivity between GAD patients and healthy controls (HC), and to assess whether those differences can serve as biomarkers to distinguish GAD from controls. Independent component analysis (ICA) with hierarchical partner matching (HPM-ICA) was conducted on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data collected from 20 GAD patients with medicine-free and 20 matched HC, identifying nine highly reproducible and significantly different functional brain connectivity patterns across diagnostic groups. We then utilized Granger causality (GC) to study the effective connectivity between the regions that identified by HPM-ICA. The linear discriminant analysis was finally used to distinguish GAD from controls with these measures of neural connectivity. The GAD patients showed stronger functional connectivity in amygdala, insula, putamen, thalamus, and posterior cingulate cortex, but weaker in frontal and temporal cortex compared with controls. Besides, the effective connectivity in GAD was decreased from the cortex to amygdala and basal ganglia. Applying the ICA and GC features to the classifier led to a classification accuracy of 87.5%, with a sensitivity of 90.0% and a specificity of 85.0%. These findings suggest that the presence of emotion dysregulation circuits may contribute to the pathophysiology of GAD, and these aberrant brain features may serve as robust brain biomarkers for GAD.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aberrant Functional Network Connectivity as a Biomarker of Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Qiao

Cao

et al. 2017

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…It has connections with widespread cortical and subcortical regions (Qiao et al, 2017) and participates in multiple cognitive and emotional processes (Jiang et al, 2018). Previous studies reported hyperactivation of the thalamus in GAD during imagining disorder-related scenarios (Buff et al, 2018), and increased rsFCs of the thalamus in GAD patients (Etkin et al, 2009;Qiao et al, 2017). Consistent with functional impairments, GAD also exhibits structural abnormalities in the limbic system, such as reduced gray matter volume in regions including the hippocampus, thalamus and insula (Abdallah et al, 2013;Moon, Kim, & Jeong, 2014;Moon, Yang, & Jeong, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Dynamic changes of amplitude of low‐frequency fluctuations in patients with generalized anxiety disorder

Cui

Sheng

Chen

et al. 2019

Human Brain Mapping

115

101

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Previous neuroimaging studies have mainly focused on alterations of static and dynamic functional connectivity in patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). However, the characteristics of local brain activity over time in GAD are poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate the abnormal time‐varying local brain activity of GAD by using the amplitude of low‐frequency fluctuation (ALFF) method combined with sliding‐window approach. Group comparison results showed that compared with healthy controls (HCs), patients with GAD exhibited increased dynamic ALFF (dALFF) variability in widespread regions, including the bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, thalamus, striatum; and left orbital frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, temporal pole, inferior temporal gyrus, and fusiform gyrus. The abnormal dALFF could be used to distinguish between patients with GAD and HCs. Increased dALFF variability values in the striatum were positively correlated with GAD symptom severity. These findings suggest that GAD patients are associated with abnormal temporal variability of local brain activity in regions implicated in executive, emotional, and social function. This study provides insight into the brain dysfunction of GAD from the perspective of dynamic local brain activity, highlighting the important role of dALFF variability in understanding neurophysiological mechanisms and potentially informing the diagnosis of GAD.

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“…PFC, ACC and amygdala were all reported to act abnormally in GAD, as indicated above. Insula and hippocampus were also included because both insula and hippocampus have been found to be implicated in GAD’s pathology as well 1 [ 1 , 33 , 34 ]. What’s more, all of these brain regions are considered as part of emotion circuitry [ 35 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 1 Firstly, hippocampus is considered part of the limbic system responsible for fear generation and was part of common neurocircuitry implicated in all anxiety disorders [ 1 ]; secondly, connectivity between insula and amygdala was impaired in GAD patients [ 9 , 33 ]; thirdly, both insula and hippocampus showed increased activation under emotional task in GAD patients [ 34 ]. …”

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confidence: 99%

Emotion reactivity-related brain network analysis in generalized anxiety disorder: a task fMRI study

Zhong

et al. 2020

BMC Psychiatry

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Background: Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is closely associated with emotional dysregulation. Patients with GAD tend to overreact to emotional stimuli and are impaired in emotional regulation. Using emotional regulation task, studies have found hypo-activation in prefrontal cortex (PFC) of GAD patients and concluded with inadequate top-down control. However, results remain inconsistent concerning PFC and limbic area's reactivity to emotional stimuli. What's more, only a few studies aim to identify how limbic area interacts with PFC in GAD patients. The current study aims to identify the difference in PFC-limbic circuitry response to emotional stimuli between GAD patients and healthy controls (HCs) from the perspective of brain network. Through brain network analysis, it revealed the connectivity between limbic area and PFC, and moreover, the orientation of connectivity, all of which gave a better test of inadequate top-down control hypothesis. Methods: During fMRI scanning, participants were required to complete an emotional face identification task (fearful, neutral, happy facial expression). 30 participants (16 GAD patients, 14 HCs) were included in the formal analysis. A Bayesian-network based method was used to identify the brain network consisting of several pre-hypothesized regions of interest (ROIs) under each condition (negative, positive, neutral). In total, six graphs were obtained. Each of them represented the brain network that was common to the group under corresponding condition. Results: Results revealed that GAD patients showed more bottom-up connection but less top-down connection regardless of condition, relative to HCs. Also, the insula was more connected but the amygdala was less connected regardless of condition, relative to HCs. the results also revealed a very different brain network response between GAD patients and HCs even under neutral condition. Conclusions: More bottom-up connection but less top-down connection may indicate that GAD patients are insufficient in top-down control, in keeping with inadequate top-down control hypothesis. The more connected insula may indicate GAD patients' abnormality in interoception processing. Relative to HCs, distinct brain network response pattern in GAD patients under neutral condition suggests GAD patients' abnormality in distinguishing safety from threat and intolerance of uncertainty.

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Directed threat imagery in generalized anxiety disorder

Cited by 17 publications

References 90 publications

Aberrant Functional Network Connectivity as a Biomarker of Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Aberrant Functional Network Connectivity as a Biomarker of Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Dynamic changes of amplitude of low‐frequency fluctuations in patients with generalized anxiety disorder

Emotion reactivity-related brain network analysis in generalized anxiety disorder: a task fMRI study

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