The structural and functional connectivity of the amygdala: From normal emotion to pathological anxiety

Abstract

The dynamic interactions between the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are usefully conceptualized as a circuit that both allows us to react automatically to biologically relevant predictive stimuli as well as regulate these reactions when the situation calls for it. In this review, we will begin by discussing the role of this amygdala-mPFC circuitry in the conditioning and extinction of aversive learning in animals. We will then relate these data to emotional regulation paradigms in humans. Finally, we will consider how these processes are compromised in normal and pathological anxiety. We conclude that the capacity for efficient crosstalk between the amygdala and the mPFC, which is represented as the strength of the amygdala-mPFC circuitry, is crucial to beneficial outcomes in terms of reported anxiety.

Affect labeling enhances exposure effectiveness for public speaking anxiety

“…Patients with anxiety show deficits in prefrontal amygdala connectivity (Hahn et al, 2011;Kim et al, 2011), and repeated activation of prefrontal regions that project to the amygdala through exposure and affect labeling can lead to a reduction in physiological activation in response to an anxiety provoking stimulus. The results of the current study indicate that instruction to label emotional experiences improves physiological attenuation of fear, and that the more a fearful individual labels his or her emotional experience during exposure, the greater the reduction in galvanic skin response (a measure of fear arousal) when they next encounter the feared stimulus.…”

Gutsy Moves: The Amygdala as a Critical Node in Microbiota to Brain Signaling

“…[10,12,16] In fact, the connectivity between these three major regions, not just the function of the individual structures, is fundamental to appropriate emotional responses. [17] Although tracer studies have shown afferents reaching all amygdala nuclei, sensory inputs often reach the amygdala through the LA while inputs from other brain regions target primarily the LA and BLA. From here, numerous and complex intra-amygdaloid projections allow substantial communication between subdivisions, often following a lateral to medial direction until signals reach the CeA, from which the majority of efferent projections originate.…”

“…[15] These efferent projections connect the amygdala to a wide variety of brain areas such as the brainstem, cortical areas, and subcortical nuclei including the hypothalamus and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. [15,17] The amygdaloid complex undergoes ongoing development well into postnatal life. Rodent studies have demonstrated that the soma size and number of dendritic spines on BLA neurons reach adult levels by early adolescence, while there are ongoing changes in dendritic morphology into adulthood that parallel electrophysiological maturation of neurons in this region.…”

Interpersonal early‐life trauma alters amygdala connectivity and sustained attention performance

“…Contrasted to activation analyses, functional connectivity takes into account the entire task time series, and are model‐free, capturing cofluctuations in activity not captured by extrinsic events in model‐based activation analyses (Gonzalez‐Castillo et al., 2012). Recent studies using functional connectivity analyses suggest that this approach is sensitive to I‐ELT (Philip et al., 2013; Philip et al., 2014), as well as individual differences in anxiety, intelligence, cognitive ability, and ADHD symptoms (Finn et al., 2015; Fortenbaugh, DeGutis, & Esterman, in press; Kim et al., 2011; Poole et al., 2016; Rosenberg et al., 2016). This approach may thus reveal previously unobserved brain–behavior associations that are relevant to our understanding of cognition and psychopathology.…”