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Amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex connectivity relates to stress and mental health in early childhood.

ABSTRACT: Early life stress has been associated with disrupted functional connectivity between the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), but it is unknown how early in development stress-related differences in amygdala-mPFC connectivity emerge. In a resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) analysis with 79 four- to seven-year-old children, we found a significant correlation between more adverse experiences and weaker amygdala-mPFC rs-FC. We also found that weaker amygdala-mPFC rs-FC was associated with higher levels of aggressive behavior and attention problems. These findings suggest that the impact of stress on emotional circuitry is detectable in early childhood and that this impact is associated with mental health difficulties. Connectivity in this circuit may be useful as a marker for mental health risk and for tracking the efficacy of early interventions.

SUBMITTER: Park AT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5928403 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex connectivity relates to stress and mental health in early childhood.

Park Anne T AT Leonard Julia A JA Saxler Patricia K PK Cyr Abigail B AB Gabrieli John D E JDE Mackey Allyson P AP

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 20180401 4

Early life stress has been associated with disrupted functional connectivity between the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), but it is unknown how early in development stress-related differences in amygdala-mPFC connectivity emerge. In a resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) analysis with 79 four- to seven-year-old children, we found a significant correlation between more adverse experiences and weaker amygdala-mPFC rs-FC. We also found that weaker amygdala-mPFC rs-FC was assoc ...[more]

PMID: 29522160

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Project description:Altered functional connectivity (FC) between the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and amygdala is widely implicated as a neural mechanism explaining risk for psychopathology among those exposed to early life trauma. Nonetheless, contemporary neuroimaging research has shifted toward large-scale network models of brain function, and it is not clear how this common bi-nodal finding fits into larger-scale network models. Here, using dynamic functional connectivity (DFC) approaches combined with large-scale network analyses, the larger role of bi-nodal FC between mPFC and amygdala among a sample of adolescent girls is investigated. The sample was comprised of 30 healthy control girls and 26 girls exposed to either physical or sexual assault who underwent a resting-state scan during 3T MRI. DFC using a sliding window approach was used to create weighted, undirected, graphs from the resting-state data following parcellation with a 215 regions-of-interest (ROI) atlas. Using a priori ROI, the predicted finding of lessor FC between mPFC and amygdala as a function of early life trauma was replicated in this sample. By contrast, early life trauma was associated with greater large-scale network modularity. Using a dynamic FC approach, it is also demonstrated that within-subject variability in this bi-nodal FC closely tracks within-subject fluctuations in large-scale network patterns, including connectivity between a limbic and default mode network (in which the amygdala and mPFC nodes belong, respectively) as well as overall modular organization. These results suggest that bi-nodal FC, such as amygdala-mPFC FC, may generally reflect larger-scale network patterns. Future research is necessary to understand whether these associations between nodal FC and large-scale network organization better reflect top-down processes (larger-scale network organization drives bi-nodal FC) or bottom-up processes (bi-nodal FC drives larger-scale network organization) and the related impact of early life trauma.

Dataset Information

Amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex connectivity relates to stress and mental health in early childhood.

Publications

Amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex connectivity relates to stress and mental health in early childhood.

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