Topographical similarity of cortical thickness represents generalized anxiety symptoms in adolescence

Abstract

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a common condition characterized by excessive, uncontrollable worry. Despite increasing efforts to identify the neural underpinnings of GAD, neuroimaging research using cortical thickness have yielded largely inconsistent results. To address this, we adopted an inter-subject representational similarity analysis framework and utilized a sample of 120 adolescents (13 to 18 years of age) from the Healthy Brain Network dataset. We found greater topographical resemblance among participants with heightened generalized anxiety symptoms in the left caudal anterior cingulate and pericalcarine cortex. Such associations were not observed when including a group of younger participants (11 to 12 years of age), highlighting the importance of age range selection when considering the link between cortical thickness and anxiety. Our findings reveal a novel cortical thickness topography that represents generalized anxiety in adolescents, which is embedded within the shared geometries between generalized anxiety symptoms and cortical thickness.