Dataset Information

Opposing amygdala and ventral striatum connectivity during emotion identification.

ABSTRACT: Lesion and electrophysiological studies in animals provide evidence of opposing functions for subcortical nuclei such as the amygdala and ventral striatum, but the implications of these findings for emotion identification in humans remain poorly described. Here we report a high-resolution fMRI study in a sample of 39 healthy subjects who performed a well-characterized emotion identification task. As expected, the amygdala responded to THREAT (angry or fearful) faces more than NON-THREAT (sad or happy) faces. A functional connectivity analysis of the time series from an anatomically defined amygdala seed revealed a strong anticorrelation between the amygdala and the ventral striatum/ventral pallidum, consistent with an opposing role for these regions in during emotion identification. A second functional connectivity analysis (psychophysiological interaction) investigating relative connectivity on THREAT vs. NON-THREAT trials demonstrated that the amygdala had increased connectivity with the orbitofrontal cortex during THREAT trials, whereas the ventral striatum demonstrated increased connectivity with the posterior hippocampus on NON-THREAT trials. These results indicate that activity in the amygdala and ventral striatum may be inversely related, and that both regions may provide opposing affective bias signals during emotion identification.

SUBMITTER: Satterthwaite TD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3147143 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Opposing amygdala and ventral striatum connectivity during emotion identification.

Satterthwaite Theodore D TD Wolf Daniel H DH Pinkham Amy E AE Ruparel Kosha K Elliott Mark A MA Valdez Jeffrey N JN Overton Eve E Seubert Janina J Gur Raquel E RE Gur Ruben C RC Loughead James J

Brain and cognition 20110519 3

Lesion and electrophysiological studies in animals provide evidence of opposing functions for subcortical nuclei such as the amygdala and ventral striatum, but the implications of these findings for emotion identification in humans remain poorly described. Here we report a high-resolution fMRI study in a sample of 39 healthy subjects who performed a well-characterized emotion identification task. As expected, the amygdala responded to THREAT (angry or fearful) faces more than NON-THREAT (sad or ...[more]

PMID: 21600684

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Project description:BackgroundIrritability is a common symptom that may affect children's brain development. This study aims to (1) characterize age-dependent and age-independent neural correlates of irritability in a sample of 4-8 year old children, and (2) examine early irritability as a predictor of change in brain connectivity over time.MethodsTypically developing children, ages 4-8 years, with varying levels of irritability were included. Resting state fMRI and parent-rated irritability (via Child Behavior Checklist; CBCL) were collected at up to three time points, resulting in a cross-sectional sample at baseline (N = 176, M = 6.27, SD = 1.49), and two subsamples consisting of children who were either 4 or 6 years old at baseline that were followed longitudinally for two additional timepoints, one- and two-years post-baseline. That is, a "younger" cohort (age 4 at baseline, n = 34, M age = 4.44, SD = 0.25) and an "older" cohort (age 6 at baseline, n = 29, M age = 6.50, SD = 0.30). Across our exploratory analyses, we examined how irritability related to seed-based intrinsic connectivity via whole-brain connectivity ANCOVAs using the left and right amygdala, and left and right ventral striatum as seed regions.ResultsCross-sectionally, higher levels of irritability were associated with greater amygdala connectivity with the posterior cingulate, controlling for child age. No age-dependent effects were observed in the cross-sectional analyses. Longitudinal analyses in the younger cohort revealed that early higher vs. lower levels of irritability, controlling for later irritability, were associated with decreases in amygdala and ventral striatum connectivity with multiple frontal and parietal regions over time. There were no significant findings in the older cohort.ConclusionsFindings suggest that irritability is related to altered neural connectivity during rest regardless of age in early to middle childhood and that early childhood irritability may be linked to altered changes in neural connectivity over time. Understanding how childhood irritability interacts with neural processes can inform pathophysiological models of pediatric irritability and the development of targeted mechanistic interventions.

Dataset Information

Opposing amygdala and ventral striatum connectivity during emotion identification.

Publications

Opposing amygdala and ventral striatum connectivity during emotion identification.

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