Parsing the neural correlates of anxious apprehension and anxious arousal in the grey-matter of healthy youth

Abstract

Neuroscientific and psychological research posits that there are two transdiagnostic facets of anxiety: anxious arousal and anxious apprehension. Though these two facets of anxiety are distinct, they are often subsumed into one domain (e.g., trait anxiety). The primary goal of the current study was to delineate the relationship between anxious arousal and cortical thickness versus the relationship between anxious apprehension and cortical thickness in a sample of typically functioning youth. The secondary aim was to determine where in the brain cortical thickness significantly correlated with both components of anxiety. Results indicated that the right anterior insula has a stronger relationship to anxious arousal, whereas the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left anterior insula were found to correlate with both anxious arousal and apprehension. We also observed volumetric differences in the amygdala and hippocampus between anxious arousal and anxious apprehension. Whereas anxious arousal, but not apprehension, predicted left amygdala volume, anxious apprehension, but not arousal, predicted right hippocampal volume. These findings demonstrated that there are both differences and similarities in the neural regions that contribute to independent facets of anxiety. Results are discussed in terms of previous findings from the affective and developmental cognitive neurosciences.

Amygdala-prefrontal cortex white matter tracts are widespread, variable and implicated in amygdala modulation in adolescents

“…Additionally, previous research identified regions outside of the PFC that may influence emotion, emotion regulation, and related traits, such as anxiety. These regions include the thalamus, hippocampus, insula, and midbrain (Castagna et al, 2018;Silvers et al, 2017), areas that we did not examine in the present study. A logical avenue for future research would be to work towards understanding the direction, or directions, of influence in this circuit and how connections with other regions of the brain may affect amygdala function perhaps utilizing an effective functional connectivity analysis approach.…”

Improving biobehavioral outcomes with progressive muscle relaxation in patients with advanced lung cancer.

“…Psychometric characteristics of the measures chosen may have impacted results. In the examination of anxiety, it is often valuable to distinguish between anxious arousal (physiological symptoms such as increased heartbeat, sweating) and anxious apprehension (verbal rumination, worry; Castagna et al, 2018;Nitschke, Heller, Palmieri, & Miller, 1999). The GAD-7, used in this study, is correlated with measures that clearly distinguish between the two types of anxiety, such as the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI, r=.70), the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales -Anxious Arousal subscale (DASS-A, r=.71), and the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ, r=.76;Rutter & Brown, 2017;Seo & Park, 2015;Spitzer et al, 2006).…”

Gray-Matter Morphometry of Internalizing-Symptom Dimensions During Adolescence

“…We hypothesized that the anxious-arousal-specific factor would be associated with gray-matter morphometry of regions supporting threat processing (i.e., the amygdala; Öhman, 2005) and sensorimotor regions involved with the physiological responses to threat. Finally, we predicted that the anxious-apprehension-specific factor would be associated with left-lateralized prefrontal regions associated with verbalizations of worry (Engels et al, 2007; Nitschke et al, 1999; Sharp et al, 2015) and the hippocampus given previous associations of anxious apprehension but not anxious arousal in children (Castagna et al, 2018).…”

“…In the current study, we employed a bifactor model of internalizing symptoms to identify brain regions associated with four internalizing dimensions: a common internalizing dimension capturing symptoms that are shared across depression and anxiety and three specific symptom dimensions, including a low-positive-affect-specific dimension, an anxious-arousal-specific dimension, and an anxious-apprehension-specific dimension. Although a handful of studies have investigated the neuroanatomical correlates of related dimensions (e.g., Cardinale et al, 2019; Castagna et al, 2018; Holmes et al, 2012; Lener et al, 2016), to our knowledge, no study has employed bifactor modeling to parse common and unique variance between the four internalizing symptom dimensions. We used a bifactor-model approach because it allowed us to differentiate between common and specific symptom dimensions, something that alternative parameterizations are unable to do (Bornovalova et al, 2020).…”

“…Because adolescent females are thought to undergo neurodevelopmental processes earlier than males (Giedd et al, 2012; Lenroot et al, 2007), we predicted we would observe sex-moderation effects in late-developing prefrontal regions and that early-developing sensorimotor regions would demonstrate consistent effects across the sexes. Finally, whereas associations between psychopathology severity and gray-matter morphometry have been consistently negative in adults (i.e., higher levels of symptom severity associated with less gray-matter volume or thickness), findings in samples of youths have shown more variability in terms of direction (e.g., Castagna et al, 2018); some evidence suggests that the direction of the relationship between gray matter and psychopathology may shift during adolescence (Ducharme et al, 2014). Thus, we hypothesized that across different brain regions, we might observe either negative or positive associations (i.e., higher levels of symptom severity associated with greater gray-matter volume or thickness) in the current adolescent sample.…”