Linking brain activity across scales with simultaneous opto- and electrophysiology

The brain enables adaptive behavior via the dynamic coordination of diverse neuronal signals across spatial and temporal scales: from fast action potential patterns in microcircuits to slower patterns of distributed activity in brain-wide networks. Understanding principles of multiscale dynamics requires simultaneous monitoring of signals in multiple, distributed network nodes. Combining optical and electrical recordings of brain activity is promising for collecting data across multiple scales and can reveal aspects of coordinated dynamics invisible to standard, single-modality approaches. We review recent progress in combining opto- and electrophysiology, focusing on mouse studies that shed new light on the function of single neurons by embedding their activity in the context of brain-wide activity patterns. Optical and electrical readouts can be tailored to desired scales to tackle specific questions. For example, fast dynamics in single cells or local populations recorded with multi-electrode arrays can be related to simultaneously acquired optical signals that report activity in specified subpopulations of neurons, in non-neuronal cells, or in neuromodulatory pathways. Conversely, two-photon imaging can be used to densely monitor activity in local circuits while sampling electrical activity in distant brain areas at the same time. The refinement of combined approaches will continue to reveal previously inaccessible and under-appreciated aspects of coordinated brain activity.

Intranasal administration of stem cell-derived exosomes for central nervous system diseases

ABSTRACT

Exosomes, lipid bilayer-enclosed small cellular vesicles, are actively secreted by various cells and play crucial roles in intercellular communication. These nanosized vesicles transport internalized proteins, mRNA, miRNA, and other bioactive molecules. Recent findings have provided compelling evidence that exosomes derived from stem cells hold great promise as a therapeutic modality for central nervous system disorders. These exosomes exhibit multifaceted properties including anti-apoptotic, anti-inflammatory, neurogenic, and vasculogenic effects. Furthermore, exosomes offer several advantages over stem cell therapy, such as high preservation capacity, low immunogenicity, the ability to traverse the blood-brain barrier, and the potential for drug encapsulation. Consequently, researchers have turned their attention to exosomes as a novel therapeutic avenue. Nonetheless, akin to the limitations of stem cell treatment, the limited accumulation of exosomes in the injured brain poses a challenge to their clinical application. To overcome this hurdle, intranasal administration has emerged as a non-invasive and efficacious route for delivering drugs to the central nervous system. By exploiting the olfactory and trigeminal nerve axons, this approach enables the direct transport of therapeutics to the brain while bypassing the blood-brain barrier. Notably, exosomes, owing to their small size, can readily access the nerve pathways using this method. As a result, intranasal administration has gained increasing recognition as an optimal therapeutic strategy for exosome-based treatments. In this comprehensive review, we aim to provide an overview of both basic and clinical research studies investigating the intranasal administration of exosomes for the treatment of central nervous system diseases. Furthermore, we elucidate the underlying therapeutic mechanisms and offer insights into the prospect of this approach.

Vibration-reduced anxiety-like behavior relies on ameliorating abnormalities of the somatosensory cortex and medial prefrontal cortex

JOURNAL/nrgr/04.03/01300535-202406000-00040/inline-graphic1/v/2023-10-30T152229Z/r/image-tiff

Tibetan singing bowls emit low-frequency sounds and produce perceptible harmonic tones and vibrations through manual tapping. The sounds the singing bowls produce have been shown to enhance relaxation and reduce anxiety. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we used chronic restraint stress or sleep deprivation to establish mouse models of anxiety that exhibit anxiety-like behaviors. We then supplied treatment with singing bowls in a bottomless cage placed on the top of a cushion. We found that unlike in humans, the combination of harmonic tones and vibrations did not improve anxiety-like behaviors in mice, while individual vibration components did. Additionally, the vibration of singing bowls increased the level of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor 1 in the somatosensory cortex and prefrontal cortex of the mice, decreased the level of γ-aminobutyric acid A (GABA) receptor α 1 subtype, reduced the level of CaMKII in the prefrontal cortex, and increased the number of GABAergic interneurons. At the same time, electrophysiological tests showed that the vibration of singing bowls significantly reduced the abnormal low-frequency gamma oscillation peak frequency in the medial prefrontal cortex caused by stress restraint pressure and sleep deprivation. Results from this study indicate that the vibration of singing bowls can alleviate anxiety-like behaviors by reducing abnormal molecular and electrophysiological events in somatosensory and medial prefrontal cortex.

Negative mood and optimism bias: An experimental investigation of sadness and belief updating

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Understanding how individuals integrate new information to form beliefs under changing emotional conditions is crucial to describing decision-making processes. Previous research suggests that although most people demonstrate bias toward optimistic appraisals of new information when updating beliefs, individuals with dysphoric psychiatric conditions (e.g., major depression) do not demonstrate this same bias. Despite these findings, limited research has investigated the relationship between affective states and belief updating processes.

METHODS

We induced neutral and sad moods in participants and had them complete a belief-updating paradigm by estimating the likelihood of negative future events happening to them, viewing the actual likelihood, and then re-estimating their perceived likelihood.

RESULTS

We observed that individuals updated their beliefs more after receiving desirable information relative to undesirable information under neutral conditions. Further, we found that individuals did not demonstrate unrealistic optimism under negative affective conditions.

LIMITATIONS

This study incorporated a population of university students under laboratory conditions and would benefit from replication and extension in clinical populations and naturalistic settings.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that momentary fluctuations in mood affect how individuals integrate information to form beliefs.

Mental threat rehearsal increases fear generalization

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Fear generalization to harmless stimuli characterizes anxiety-related disorders, but much remains unknown about its determinants. Based on studies showing that mental imagery of threat can increase conditioned fear responding, we tested whether it also facilitates fear generalization, and whether threat inflation moderates this effect.

METHODS

In a fear conditioning study, 120 participants first completed an acquisition phase, in which one of two pictures was followed by an aversive sound (human scream). Then, the sound was presented 11 times at an increasing (threat inflation) or constant volume (no threat inflation). Finally, a generalization stimulus was presented, and some participants were asked to imagine the last sound (threat rehearsal) and others were not (no threat rehearsal).

RESULTS

Bayesian informative hypotheses tests indicated that imagery-based threat rehearsal increased generalization of threat expectancy, and, combined with threat inflation, it also resulted in stronger generalized distress.

LIMITATIONS

due to the absence of a test phase, it is unclear whether our effects would transfer to other GSs and whether they would persist beyond the manipulation phase.

CONCLUSIONS

Mental imagery of threat may put individuals at risk for fear generalization. Future studies should examine whether modulating imagery may prevent clinical anxiety.

Parental involvement affects parent-adolescents brain-to-brain synchrony when experiencing different emotions together: An EEG-based hyperscanning study

Parental involvement (PI) is a broad and multifaceted construct, which refers to the parental demonstration of interest in their child, caring, and warmth (Davis et al., 2021). Parental involvement affects parent-adolescent's relationship and communication. However, there was little research to examine the underlying neural mechanism. The present study aimed to explore how parental involvement is associated with the brain-to-brain synchronous activation between parent-adolescent dyads when sharing emotional experience together by using the electroencephalograph (EEG) hyperscanning. EEG was recorded simultaneously in a sample of 26 parent-adolescent dyads (Mparents'age=43.312, SD=5.468; Madolescents' age=12.077, SD=1.412) when completing the picture processing task. Phase locking values (PLVs) in beta band and gamma band were used to compare the differences in the parent-adolescent dyads' induced brain-to-brain synchrony between the high parental involvement group (HPI) and the low parental involvement group (LPI). Results showed that greater beta brain-to-brain synchrony was observed in the HPIs than in the LPIs when experiencing positive emotions together in the central region. However, there was no significant difference between the HPIs and the LPIs in the negative and neutral condition. Moreover, greater gamma brain-to-brain synchrony was observed when viewing negative emotional stimuli together than viewing positive emotional stimuli together in the LPIs in the central region. However, there was no significant difference between different emotional conditions in the HPIs. Findings of the present study provide neuroscientific evidence that parental involvement may strengthen parent-adolescent's emotional interaction and communication.

Self-esteem and cortical thickness correlate with aggression in healthy children: A surface-based analysis

Aggressive behavior can have serious physical, psychological, and social consequences. However, little is known about the personality and neurological antecedents underlying aggressive behavior in children. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-esteem, aggression, and brain structure (i.e., cortical thickness and surface area) in a population of healthy children (N = 78; 9-12 years; mean age: 9.95 ± 0.90 years). The results revealed that self-esteem showed a negative association with aggression and significantly predicted aggressive behavior. No gender differences were found in aggression and its neural correlates. We performed the cortical parcellation method to further explore the neural foundations underlying the association of self-esteem with aggression. Children with higher aggression had increased cortical thickness in four clusters after multiple comparison correction: right medial orbitofrontal cortex, right lateral orbitofrontal cortex, right superior frontal gyrus, and left insula. In a mediation analysis, cortical thickness in the right medial orbitofrontal cortex contributed to the effect of self-esteem on aggression. These findings extend our understanding of morphological correlates of aggression in children, suggesting that an increased cortical thickness in childhood is a potential mechanism linking low self-esteem to aggression.

Obsessive-compulsive and perseverative behaviors in Huntington's disease

Obsessive-compulsive and perseverative behaviors (OCBs/PBs) are characteristic features of Huntington's Disease (HD). Although a few recent research have attempted to discriminate between OCBs and PBs, most of the available evidence on OCBs does not consistently make this distinction. In this article, we aimed to explore the current inconsistencies in assessing and reporting OCBs/PBs and map the body of existing evidence. Up to half of the patients with motor manifest HD can experience OCBs. Separate reporting of PBs in HD patients has been uncommon among the studies and was frequently reported as a part of obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The structural limitation of the currently used rating scales and the overlaps in neuropathology and definition of OCBs and PBs are among the main reasons for the mixed reporting of OCBs/PBs. Perseverative thinking or behavior as a separate item is found in a few assessment tools, such as the Problem Behaviors Assessment - Short form (PBA-s). Even when the item exists, it is commonly reported as a composite score in combination with the obsessive-compulsive item. In addition to the significant psychological burden in individuals with HD, PBs are associated with somatic effects (e.g., cardiovascular symptoms) and high-risk behaviors (e.g., suicide). Recognition and monitoring of PBs in HD can aid in early detection of concerning symptoms and differentiating overlapping illnesses.

Identification of areas of the brain activated by active stimulation in hairless skin

In the past few decades, neuroscientists have studied the physiological basis of pleasant touch. Unmyelinated low-threshold mechanoreceptors are central to the study of the physiological basis of pleasant touch. Research on pleasant stimuli has mostly focused on passive stimuli, and the brain activation sites for active pleasant stimuli are not clear. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify brain activation sites during active pleasant stimulation of hairless skin using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Forty-two healthy subjects aged 19 years or older were asked to actively grasp in five stimulus tasks. The comfort and sensations that occurred during the tasks were investigated using a questionnaire. Significant activation was found in the middle frontal gyrus when the hair ball and slime ball were grasped, while there was significant activation in the amygdala when grasping a squeeze ball compared to the tennis ball. In a questionnaire survey of the subjects, there was a significant difference in the comfort score between the tennis ball and the squeeze ball, but no significant correlation was found between the comfort scores and the brain sites of activation. Therefore, although active stimulation with the squeeze ball significantly activated the amygdala, it was not clear that the amygdala was significantly activated by active pleasant stimulation. In the future, it will be necessary to investigate the texture of the squeeze ball in more detail, and to increase the number of subjects for further study.

The differential processing of verbal jokes by neural substrates in indigenous and Han Chinese populations: An fMRI study

Limited research has been conducted on humor among the Taiwanese indigenous (IND) population. This study attempted to identify the differential neural correlates of humor comprehension and appreciation between IND and Han Chinese (HAN) populations. Each participant was presented with jokes and non-jokes. IND participants when encountered with jokes displayed a greater activation of the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward system, including the amygdala, midbrain, and nucleus accumbens than HAN participants. This suggests a more pleasurable response and appreciation of humor. The IND group also displayed greater activation in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) than HAN, suggesting that the IND group may experience a greater sense of novelty and be more involved in social understanding, thus exhibiting greater humor appreciation. In terms of humor comprehension, both IND and HAN showed greater activation in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). IND exhibited greater activation in the anterior STG (aSTG), while HAN showed greater activation in the posterior STG (pSTG). This suggests that the IND tends to integrate emotional messages, whereas the HAN focuses on comprehending semantic cognitive information. Interestingly, HAN did not show any greater activation than IND in terms of appreciation of humor. These group disparities have substantial implications for advancing our knowledge of the neural mechanisms underlying humor comprehension and appreciation.

Triggered by worry: A dynamic network analysis of COVID-19 pandemic-related anxiety and parental stress

BACKGROUND

Major disruptions to daily life routines made families and parents particularly vulnerable to psychological distress during the COVID-19 lockdowns. However, the specific psychopathological processes related to within-person variation and maintenance of anxiety symptomatology and parental distress components in the parental population have been largely unexplored in the literature.

METHODS

In this preregistered intensive longitudinal study, a multilevel dynamic network was used to model within-person interactions between anxiety symptomatology, psychopathological processes, parental distress, and protective lifestyle components in a sample of 495 parents-each responding to daily assessments over a 40-day period. A total of 30,195 observations were collected across the subjects.

RESULTS

Extensive worry, threat monitoring, and uncontrollability of worry were identified as overreaching psychopathological processes related to the aggravation of other symptoms of anxiety and parental distress. A strong association was found between parental stress and parental burnout. Anger toward one's child was associated with both parental stress and parental burnout. Protective factors showed the lowest strength centrality, with few and weak connections to other symptoms and processes in the network.

LIMITATIONS

Associations may exist between the study variables on a different time scale; hence, different time lags should be used in future research.

CONCLUSIONS

Accessible, low-cost interventions that address worry, threat monitoring, and the uncontrollability of worry could serve as potential targets for reducing the symptom burden of anxiety and distress in the parental population.

A review of the neurotransmitter system associated with cognitive function of the cerebellum in Parkinson's disease

The dichotomized brain system is a concept that was generalized from the 'dual syndrome hypothesis' to explain the heterogeneity of cognitive impairment, in which anterior and posterior brain systems are independent but partially overlap. The dopaminergic system acts on the anterior brain and is responsible for executive function, working memory, and planning. In contrast, the cholinergic system acts on the posterior brain and is responsible for semantic fluency and visuospatial function. Evidence from dopaminergic/cholinergic imaging or functional neuroimaging has shed significant insight relating to the involvement of the cerebellum in the cognitive process of patients with Parkinson's disease. Previous research has reported evidence that the cerebellum receives both dopaminergic and cholinergic projections. However, whether these two neurotransmitter systems are associated with cognitive function has yet to be fully elucidated. Furthermore, the precise role of the cerebellum in patients with Parkinson's disease and cognitive impairment remains unclear. Therefore, in this review, we summarize the cerebellar dopaminergic and cholinergic projections and their relationships with cognition, as reported by previous studies, and investigated the role of the cerebellum in patients with Parkinson's disease and cognitive impairment, as determined by functional neuroimaging. Our findings will help us to understand the role of the cerebellum in the mechanisms underlying cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease.

Playing hide and seek: Contextual regularity learning develops between 3 and 5 years of age

The ability to acquire contextual regularities is fundamental in everyday life because it helps us to navigate the environment, directing our attention where relevant events are more likely to occur. Sensitivity to spatial regularities has been largely reported from infancy. Nevertheless, it is currently unclear when children can use this rapidly acquired contextual knowledge to guide their behavior. Evidence of this ability is indeed mixed in school-aged children and, to date, it has never been explored in younger children and toddlers. The current study investigated the development of contextual regularity learning in children aged 3 to 5 years. To this aim, we designed a new contextual learning paradigm in which young children were presented with recurring configurations of bushes and were asked to guess behind which bush a cartoon monkey was hiding. In a series of two experiments, we manipulated the relevance of color and visuospatial cues for the underlying task goal and tested how this affected young children's behavior. Our results bridge the gap between the infant and adult literatures, showing that sensitivity to spatial configurations persists from infancy to childhood, but it is only around the fifth year of life that children naturally start to integrate multiple cues to guide their behavior.

Sustained selective attention in adolescence: Cognitive development and predictors of distractibility at school

Despite much research into the development of attention in adolescence, mixed results and between-task differences have precluded clear conclusions regarding the relative early or late maturation of attention abilities. Moreover, although adolescents constantly face the need to pay attention at school, it remains unclear whether laboratory measures of attention can predict their ability to sustain attention focus during lessons. Therefore, here we devised a task that was sensitive to measure both sustained and selective attention and tested whether task measures could predict adolescents' levels of inattention during lessons. In total, 166 adolescents (aged 12-17 years) and 50 adults performed a sustained selective attention task, searching for letter targets while ignoring salient yet entirely irrelevant distractor faces, under different levels of perceptual load-an established determinant of attention in adults. Inattention levels during a just preceding classroom lesson were measured using a novel self-report classroom distractibility checklist. The results established that sustained attention (measured with response variability) continued to develop throughout adolescence across perceptual load levels. In contrast, there was an earlier maturation of the effect of perceptual load on selective attention; load modulation of distractor interference was larger in the early adolescence period compared with later periods. Both distractor interference and response variability were significant unique predictors of distractibility in the classroom, including when controlling for interest in the lesson and cognitive aptitude. Overall, the results demonstrate divergence of development of sustained and selective attention in adolescence and establish both as significant predictors of attention in the important educational setting of school lessons.

Conceptualizing Consciousness: a Change in Perspective: The Elephant Still Surprises Those only Touching Its Trunk

Providers of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) face clinical and ethical challenges that could be lessened by becoming acquainted with the subjective and objective aspects of consciousness. A first step to improving DoC taxonomies, management, and outcomes might be to recognize the shortcomings of the medical concept of consciousness and to improve the terminology used for the clinical parameters assessed. The authors critically review the medical perspective of consciousness represented by three sub-concepts that do not necessarily correlate with one another and discuss how none of them reflects fully the personal subjective nature of consciousness.

Automatic imitation in school-aged children

Children imitate others for different reasons: To learn from others and to reach social goals such as affiliation or prosociality. So far, imitative acts have been measured using diverging methods in children and adults. Here, we investigated whether school-aged children's imitation can be measured via their automatic imitation with a classical imitation-inhibition task (Brass et al., 2000) as has been used in adults. To this end, we measured automatic imitation in N=94 7-8-year-olds and N=10 adults. The results were similar in children and adults: Observing actions that are incongruent with participants' actions interferes with their responses resulting in increased reaction times and error rates. This shows that assessing automatic imitation via the imitation-inhibition task is feasible in children, and creates the basis for future studies to compare the behaviour of different age groups with the same imitation task.

Disorders of Consciousness: Classification and Taxonomy

In this article, we discuss the taxonomy associated with the four major disorders of consciousness (DoC): coma, vegetative state or unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, minimally conscious state, and post-traumatic confusional state. We briefly review the history of each disorder and then provide operational definitions and diagnostic criteria for each one. We rely heavily on recently released practice guidelines and, where appropriate, identify knowledge gaps and discuss future directions to advance DoC research and practice.

Many preschoolers do not distinguish the possible from the impossible in a marble-catching task

Do preschoolers differentiate events that might and might not happen from events that cannot happen? The current study modified Redshaw & Suddendorf's "Y-shaped tube task" to test how the ability to distinguish mere possibilities from impossibilities emerges over ontogenesis. In the Y-shaped tube task, the experimenter holds a ball above a tube shaped like an upside-down "Y" and asks a participant to catch it. A participant who identifies the two possible paths the ball can take should cover both exits at the bottom of the Y. But children might cover both exits without identifying both possibilities. For example, there are two good places to put hands, so they might just put one hand in each place. This does not require checking whether there is a path from the entrance to each exit. If children cover both exits because they have identified two possible paths for the ball, then they should differentiate exits where it is possible for the ball to come out from impossible exits, where there is no path from the entrance to the exit. In total, 24 36-month-olds and 24 48-month-olds were tested. Less than 20% of 36-month-olds and only about half of 48-month-olds distinguished between possible and impossible exits. Children who do not distinguish the possible from the impossible might not be evaluating possibilities at all. Results converge with existing literature suggesting that action planning that is sensitive to incompatible possibilities often emerges after the fourth birthday.

Sleep, brain systems, and persistent stress in early adolescents during COVID-19: Insights from the ABCD study

PURPOSE

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic constituted a major life stress event for many adolescents, associated with disrupted school, behaviors, social networks, and health concerns. However, pandemic-related stress was not equivalent for everyone and could have been influenced by pre-pandemic factors including brain structure and sleep, which both undergo substantial development during adolescence. Here, we analyzed clusters of perceived stress levels across the pandemic and determined developmentally relevant pre-pandemic risk factors in brain structure and sleep of persistently high stress during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

We investigated longitudinal changes in perceived stress at six timepoints across the first year of the pandemic (May 2020-March 2021) in 5559 adolescents (50 % female; age range: 11-14 years) in the United States (U.S.) participating in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. In 3141 of these adolescents, we fitted machine learning models to identify the most important pre-pandemic predictors from structural MRI brain measures and self-reported sleep data that were associated with persistently high stress across the first year of the pandemic.

RESULTS

Patterns of perceived stress levels varied across the pandemic, with 5 % reporting persistently high stress. Our classifiers accurately detected persistently high stress (AUC > 0.7). Pre-pandemic brain structure, specifically cortical volume in temporal regions, and cortical thickness in multiple parietal and occipital regions, predicted persistent stress. Pre-pandemic sleep difficulties and short sleep duration were also strong predictors of persistent stress, along with more advanced pubertal stage.

CONCLUSIONS

Adolescents showed variable stress responses during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and some reported persistently high stress across the whole first year. Vulnerability to persistent stress was evident in several brain structural and self-reported sleep measures, collected before the pandemic, suggesting the relevance of other pre-existing individual factors beyond pandemic-related factors, for persistently high stress responses.

EEG microstate analysis reveals large-scale brain network alterations in depressed adolescents with suicidal ideation

BACKGROUND

Accumulating evidence showed abnormalities in brain network connectivity in depressive individuals with suicidal ideation (SI). We aimed to investigate the large-scale brain network dynamics in adolescents with SI and major depressive disorder (MDD).

METHODS

We recruited 47 first-episode drug-naïve adolescents with MDD and SI, 26 depressed adolescents without SI (noSI), and 26 age-matched healthy controls (HC). The Columbia Suicidal Ideation Severity Scale (C-SSRS) was utilized to assess suicide ideation. We acquired 64-channel resting-state EEG recordings from all subjects and used microstate analysis to investigate the large-scale brain network dynamics.

RESULTS

We observed a significant reduction in the occurrence and coverage of microstate B within the SI group when contrasted with the noSI group. Conversely, there was a significant increase in the occurrence and coverage of microstate A in the SI group as compared to the HC group. Additionally, we observed heightened transition probabilities from microstates D and C to microstate A in the SI group; meanwhile, transitions from microstate D to B were more prevalent in the noSI group. Furthermore, the noSI group exhibited a significant decline in the transition probabilities from microstate D to microstate C.

LIMITATIONS

The cross-sectional nature limits the capacity to determine whether microstate dynamics have prognostic significance for SI.

CONCLUSION

We provided evidence that depressed adolescents with SI have a distinct pattern in microstate dynamics compared to those without SI. These findings suggest that microstate dynamics might serve as a potential neurobiomarker for identifying SI in depressed adolescents.

Heightened neural activity and functional connectivity responses to social rejection in female adolescents at risk for depression: Testing the Social Signal Transduction Theory of Depression

BACKGROUND

Although social rejection is among the strongest proximal precipitants of major depressive disorder (MDD), little is known about the underlying neurobiological mechanisms and whether neural sensitivity to social rejection may help explain differences in MDD risk. To address this issue, we tested whether neural responses to social threat differed in female adolescents at high vs. low maternal risk for MDD.

METHOD

Female adolescents with (high-risk; n = 22, Mage = 14.68) and without (low-risk; n = 30, Mage = 15.07) a maternal history of depression were experimentally exposed to negative and neutral social evaluation while undergoing an fMRI scan. Neural responses were assessed by event-related activity and functional connectivity, as well as multivoxel pattern analysis. Activity and functional connectivity analyses focused on a priori-selected regions of interest implicated in self-referential processing and emotion regulation.

RESULTS

Compared to low-risk female adolescents, high-risk female adolescents exhibited greater increases in self-reported depression and social disconnection following social evaluation. Moreover, compared to low-risk female adolescents, high-risk female adolescents exhibited greater amygdala responses to negative social evaluation and a differential pattern of functional connectivity in brain regions related to emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and negative affect. Additionally, these markers of neural threat reactivity were related to depressive symptoms.

LIMITATIONS

A cross-sectional study design and relatively small, Western sample.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that exaggerated neural reactivity to social threat-and an atypical pattern of related functional connectivity-is e