Bouziane, I;
Das, M;
Friston, KJ;
Caballero-Gaudes, C;
Ray, D;
(2022)
Enhanced top-down sensorimotor processing in somatic anxiety.
Translational Psychiatry
, 12
, Article 295. 10.1038/s41398-022-02061-2.
Preview |
PDF
s41398-022-02061-2.pdf - Published Version Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Functional neuroimaging research on anxiety has traditionally focused on brain networks associated with the psychological aspects of anxiety. Here, instead, we target the somatic aspects of anxiety. Motivated by the growing appreciation that top-down cortical processing plays a crucial role in perception and action, we used resting-state functional MRI data from the Human Connectome Project and Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) to characterize effective connectivity among hierarchically organized regions in the exteroceptive, interoceptive, and motor cortices. In people with high (fear-related) somatic arousal, top-down effective connectivity was enhanced in all three networks: an observation that corroborates well with the phenomenology of anxiety. The anxiety-associated changes in connectivity were sufficiently reliable to predict whether a new participant has mild or severe somatic anxiety. Interestingly, the increase in top-down connections to sensorimotor cortex were not associated with fear affect scores, thus establishing the (relative) dissociation between somatic and cognitive dimensions of anxiety. Overall, enhanced top-down effective connectivity in sensorimotor cortices emerges as a promising and quantifiable candidate marker of trait somatic anxiety.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Enhanced top-down sensorimotor processing in somatic anxiety |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41398-022-02061-2 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-022-02061-2 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Brain, Connectome, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Nerve Net |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10153367 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
