Differences in Resting-State Functional Connectivity Associated with Trait Anxiety

Congratulations to Aliesha, a PhD candidate and MBChB student in IMAGE Otago, on your recently published first, first-author paper! Below is a summary of Aliesha's paper - if you would like to read Aliesha's paper in full, please see the link at the bottom of the page. 

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health conditions globally, and they disproportionately affect women. To understand why and how anxiety happens, Aliesha (a PhD candidate and MBChB student in IMAGE Otago) uses brain imaging to look at the amygdala—part of the brain's "alarm system"—and its connections to other areas that regulate fear and emotions.

In this study, Aliesha aimed to see how the connections with this brain region differ based on a person's general level of anxiety (called "trait anxiety") and whether these connectivity patterns look different in men versus women with 'non-clinical' levels of anxiety ('normal' anxiety levels). We've used a high-powered MRI scanner (a 7Tesla - which is roughly 5x stronger than the MRI scanners in most hospitals) to look at "resting-state" brain activity, which shows how different parts of the brain 'talk' to each other when a person is resting (usually in the scanner with their eyes closed or staring a cross). Aliesha mapped the connections of the whole amygdala, as well as its specific sub-parts, like the CMA (the centromedial amygdala), which is heavily involved in fear responses.

Even in a healthy population, people with higher everyday anxiety scores showed stronger and more hyperactive connections between the amygdala (especially the CMA sub-region) and the rest of the brain. Essentially, higher anxiety correlates with a 'louder', more connected alarm system.

While men and women reported similar overall anxiety scores, their brains showed different underlying patterns in our exploratory analyses. Women with higher anxiety actually showed reduced connectivity between the amygdala and other brain regions compared to men.

Anxiety is likely to change how our brains communicate, even in people who haven't been diagnosed with a clinical disorder. More importantly, the findings, suggest that anxiety may 'act' differently for male and female brains. Because women are statistically much more likely to experience anxiety disorders, future studies should explore these sex-specific brain differences, as it may help to create more effective and targeted interventions.

If you would like to read Aliesha's paper, please visit: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2027-78357-001.pdf 

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