Amygdala Functional Connectivity Is Associated With Emotion Regulation and Amygdala Reactivity in 4- to 6-Year-Olds

Dimensions of Depressive Symptoms in Young Children: Factor Analysis of the Preschool Feelings Checklist-Scale

The current study is an investigation of the dimensionality of the Preschool Feelings Checklist-Scale (PFC-S), a caregiver-report questionnaire of early childhood depressive symptom severity. Caregivers of 450 young children, ages 3-8 years (M = 5.62, SD = 0.95; 49% female; 7% Hispanic; 66% White), completed the PFC-S and questionnaires on child emotion regulation and expression and self-reported depressive symptomatology. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a one-factor structure did not adequately fit the current PFC-S data. Using exploratory factor analysis, a three-factor structure emerged as interpretable and structurally sound, yielding reliable factors related to social and behavioral anhedonia, emotional and behavioral dysregulation, and excessive guilt and sadness. This factor structure showed configural and scalar invariance across preschool-aged and early middle childhood-aged children as well as children assigned male and female sex at birth. Correlations between the three factors and constructs related to depression suggested preliminary construct validity. The current study provides initial evidence for a multidimensional structure of the PFC-S and improves our understanding of early childhood depressive symptoms.

Socioeconomic factors, sleep timing and duration, and amygdala resting-state functional connectivity in children

Introduction

Reduced sleep health has been consistently linked with increased negative emotion in children. While sleep characteristics have been associated with neural function in adults and adolescents, much less is known about these associations in children while considering socioeconomic context. In this study, we examined the associations among socioeconomic factors, sleep duration and timing, and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the amygdala in children.

Methods

Participants were typically-developing 5- to 9-year-olds from socioeconomically diverse families (61% female; N = 94). Parents reported on children's weekday and weekend bedtimes and wake-up times, which were used to compute sleep duration and midpoint. Analyses focused on amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) connectivity followed by amygdala-whole brain connectivity.

Results

Lower family income-to-needs ratio and parental education were significantly associated with later weekday and weekend sleep timing and shorter weekday sleep duration. Shorter weekday sleep duration was associated with decreased amygdala-ACC and amygdala-insula connectivity. Later weekend sleep midpoint was associated with decreased amygdala-paracingulate cortex and amygdala-postcentral gyrus connectivity. Socioeconomic factors were indirectly associated with connectivity in these circuits via sleep duration and timing.

Discussion

These results suggest that socioeconomic disadvantage may interfere with both sleep duration and timing, in turn possibly altering amygdala connectivity in emotion processing and regulation circuits in children. Effective strategies supporting family economic conditions may have benefits for sleep health and brain development in children.

Reduced recruitment of inhibitory control regions in very young children with ADHD during a modified Kiddie Continuous Performance Task: a fMRI study

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptom profiles are known to undergo changes throughout development, rendering the neurobiological assessment of ADHD challenging across different developmental stages. Particularly in young children (ages 4 to 7 years), measuring inhibitory control network activity in the brain has been a formidable task due to the lack of child-friendly functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) paradigms. This study aims to address these difficulties by focusing on measuring inhibitory control in very young children within the MRI environment. A total of 56 children diagnosed with ADHD and 78 typically developing (TD) 4-7-year-old children were examined using a modified version of the Kiddie-Continuous Performance Test (K-CPT) during BOLD fMRI to assess inhibitory control. We concurrently evaluated their performance on the established and standardized K-CPT outside the MRI scanner. Our findings suggest that the modified K-CPT effectively elicited robust and expected brain activity related to inhibitory control in both groups. Comparisons between the two groups revealed subtle differences in brain activity, primarily observed in regions associated with inhibitory control, such as the inferior frontal gyrus, anterior insula, dorsal striatum, medial pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), and cingulate cortex. Notably, increased activity in the right anterior insula was associated with improved response time (RT) and reduced RT variability on the K-CPT administered outside the MRI environment, although this did not survive statistical correction for multiple comparisons. In conclusion, our study successfully overcame the challenges of measuring inhibitory control in very young children within the MRI environment by utilizing a modified K-CPT during BOLD fMRI. These findings shed light on the neurobiological correlates of inhibitory control in ADHD and TD children, provide valuable insights for understanding ADHD across development, and potentially inform ADHD diagnosis and intervention strategies. The research also highlights remaining challenges with task fMRI in very young clinical samples.

Functional connectivity changes between amygdala and prefrontal cortex after ECT are associated with improvement in distinct depressive symptoms

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is one of the most effective treatments for treatment-resistant depression. However, the underlying mechanisms of action are not yet fully understood. The investigation of depression-specific networks using resting-state fMRI and the relation to differential symptom improvement might be an innovative approach providing new insights into the underlying processes. In this naturalistic study, we investigated the relationship between changes in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and symptom improvement after ECT in 21 patients with treatment-resistant depression. We investigated rsFC before and after ECT and focused our analyses on FC changes directly related to symptom reduction and on FC at baseline to identify neural targets that might predict individual clinical responses to ECT. Additional analyses were performed to identify the direct relationship between rsFC change and symptom dimensions such as sadness, negative thoughts, detachment, and neurovegetative symptoms. An increase in rsFC between the left amygdala and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) after ECT was related to overall symptom reduction (Bonferroni-corrected p = 0.033) as well as to a reduction in specific symptoms such as sadness (r = 0.524, uncorrected p = 0.014), negative thoughts (r = 0.700, Bonferroni-corrected p = 0.002) and detachment (r = 0.663, p = 0.004), but not in neurovegetative symptoms. Furthermore, high baseline rsFC between the left amygdala and the right frontal pole (FP) predicted treatment outcome (uncorrected p = 0.039). We conclude that changes in FC in regions of the limbic-prefrontal network are associated with symptom improvement, particularly in affective and cognitive dimensions. Frontal-limbic connectivity has the potential to predict symptom improvement after ECT. Further research combining functional imaging biomarkers and a symptom-based approach might be promising.

Fetal Frontolimbic Connectivity Prospectively Associates With Aggression in Toddlers

Background

Aggression is a major public health concern that emerges early in development and lacks optimized treatment, highlighting need for improved mechanistic understanding regarding the etiology of aggression. The present study leveraged fetal resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify candidate neurocircuitry for the onset of aggressive behaviors before symptom emergence.

Methods

Pregnant mothers were recruited during the third trimester of pregnancy to complete a fetal resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Mothers subsequently completed the Child Behavior Checklist to assess child aggression at 3 years postpartum (n = 79). Independent component analysis was used to define frontal and limbic regions of interest.

Results

Child aggression was not related to within-network connectivity of subcortical limbic regions or within-medial prefrontal network connectivity in fetuses. However, weaker functional coupling between the subcortical limbic network and medial prefrontal network in fetuses was prospectively associated with greater maternal-rated child aggression at 3 years of age even after controlling for maternal emotion dysregulation and toddler language ability. We observed similar, but weaker, associations between fetal frontolimbic functional connectivity and toddler internalizing symptoms.

Conclusions

Neural correlates of aggressive behavior may be detectable in utero, well before the onset of aggression symptoms. These preliminary results highlight frontolimbic connections as potential candidate neurocircuitry that should be further investigated in relation to the unfolding of child behavior and psychiatric risk.

Keeping up with the kids: the value of co-production in the study of irritability in youth depression and its underlying neural circuitry

Irritability is a core symptom of adolescent depression, characterized by an increased proneness to anger or frustration. Irritability in youth is associated with future mental health problems and impaired social functioning, suggesting that it may be an early indicator of emotion regulation difficulties. Adolescence is a period during which behavior is significantly impacted by one's environment. However, existing research on the neural basis of irritability typically use experimental paradigms that overlook the social context in which irritability occurs. Here, we bring together current findings on irritability in adolescent depression and the associated neurobiology and highlight directions for future research. Specifically, we emphasize the importance of co-produced research with young people as a means to improve the construct and ecological validity of research within the field. Ensuring that our research design and methodology accurately reflect to lives of young people today lays a strong foundation upon which to better understand adolescent depression and identify tractable targets for intervention.

Regional superficial amygdala resting-state functional connectivity in adults infers childhood maltreatment severity

Background

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is a potential risk factor for some neuropsychiatric disorders in adulthood (e.g. depression and anxiety) and alters trajectories of brain development. Accumulating evidence suggests that functional connectivity of the limbic system, especially the amygdala, is highly associated with childhood maltreatment, although not all studies have found this. These inconsistent results may be due to differential alterations of amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) following childhood maltreatment.

Objective

Our aim was to investigate the relationship between the rsFC of amygdala subregions and CM severity, as well as to develop a stable rsFC-based model for inferring the severity of CM.

Methods

In this study, we employed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to assess CM severity in each individual. We explored the relationship between the rsFC of amygdala subregions (i.e. centromedial -CMA, basolateral -BLA, superficial-SFA amygdala) and CM experience in a discovery dataset of n = 110 healthy Chinese participants by linear multiple regression analysis. Subsequent dimensional and categorical approach were performed to elucidate the relationship between rsFCs and CM severity and CM subtypes, respectively. A support vector regression model was then conducted to validate the associations between rsFCs and total CTQ scores. Moreover, we also verified the model into another independent replication dataset (n = 38).

Results

Our findings suggested that childhood maltreatment was negatively associated with rsFC between the right superficial amygdala and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC)/postcentral gyrus (PCG) but not the other two amygdala subregions. Moreover, SFA-pgACC coupling was more associated with physical neglect whereas the SFA-PCG was more related to emotional neglect. In addition, supervised machine learning confirmed that using these two rsFCs as predictors could stably estimate continuous maltreatment severity in both discovery and replication datasets.

Conclusion

The current study supports that the rsFCs of superficial amygdala are related to childhood maltreatment and which may be a potential biomarker for the effects of childhood maltreatment-related psychiatric disorders (i.e. depression and anxiety).

Somatovisceral influences on emotional development

Frameworks of emotional development have tended to focus on how environmental factors shape children's emotion understanding. However, individual experiences of emotion represent a complex interplay between both external environmental inputs and internal somatovisceral signaling. Here, we discuss the importance of afferent signals and coordination between central and peripheral mechanisms in affective response processing. We propose that incorporating somatovisceral theories of emotions into frameworks of emotional development can inform how children understand emotions in themselves and others. We highlight promising directions for future research on emotional development incorporating this perspective, namely afferent cardiac processing and interoception, immune activation, physiological synchrony, and social touch.

Effects of maternal childhood trauma on child emotional health: maternal mental health and frontoamygdala pathways

BACKGROUND

Experiences of early life adversity pose significant psychological and physical health risks to exposed individuals. Emerging evidence suggests that these health risks can be transmitted across generations; however, the mechanisms underlying the intergenerational impacts of maternal early-life trauma on child health remain unknown.

METHODS

The current study used a prospective longitudinal design to determine the unique and joint contributions of maternal childhood trauma (neglect and abuse) and maternal prenatal and postnatal mental health (anxiety and depressive symptoms) (N = 541) to children's resting frontoamygdala functional connectivity at 6 years (N = 89) and emotional health at 7-8 years, as indexed by parent-reported internalizing problems and child self-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms (N = 268-418).

RESULTS

Greater maternal childhood neglect was indirectly associated with greater internalizing problems serially through a pathway of worse maternal prenatal and postnatal mental health (greater maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms). Worse maternal postnatal mental health was also uniquely associated with more negative child frontoamygdala resting-state functional connectivity, over and above maternal childhood trauma (both neglect and abuse) and prenatal mental health. More negative frontoamygdala functional connectivity was, in turn, associated with poorer child emotional health outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings from the current study provide support for the existence of intergenerational influences of parental exposure to childhood trauma on childhood risk for psychopathology in the next generation and point to the importance of maternal factors proximal to the second generation (maternal prenatal and postnatal mental health) in determining the intergenerational impact of maternal early experiences.

Relations Between Executive Functioning and Internalizing Symptoms Vary as a Function of Frontoparietal-amygdala Resting State Connectivity

The prefrontal cortex and the frontoparietal network are associated with a variety of regulatory behaviors. Functional connections between these brain regions and the amygdala are implicated in risk for anxiety disorders. The prefrontal cortex and frontoparietal network are also linked to executive functioning, or behaviors that help orient action towards higher order goals. Where much research has been focused on deleterious effects of under-controlled behavior, a body of work suggests that over-controlled behavior may also pose a risk for internalizing problems. Indeed, while work suggests that high levels of attention shifting may still be protective against internalizing problems, there is evidence that high levels of inhibitory control may be a risk factor for socioemotional difficulties. In the ABCD sample, which offers large sample sizes as well as sociodemographic diversity, we test the interaction between frontoparietal network-amygdala resting state functional connectivity and executive functioning behaviors on longitudinal changes in internalizing symptoms from approximately 10 to 12 years of age. We found that higher proficiency in attention shifting indeed predicts fewer internalizing behaviors over time. In addition, higher proficiency in inhibitory control predicts fewer internalizing symptoms over time, but only for children showing resting state connectivity moderately above the sample average between the frontoparietal network and amygdala. This finding supports the idea that top-down control may not be adaptive for all children, and relations between executive functioning and anxiety risk may vary as a function of trait-level regulation.

Trait anxiety is related to Nx4's efficacy on stress-induced changes in amygdala-centered resting state functional connectivity: a placebo-controlled cross-over trial in mildly to moderately stressed healthy volunteers

BACKGROUND

The multicomponent drug Neurexan (Nx4) was shown to reduce the neural stress network activation. We now investigated its effects on stress-induced resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) in dependence of trait anxiety (TA), an acknowledged vulnerability factor for stress-induced psychopathologies.

METHODS

Nx4 was tested in a randomized placebo-controlled crossover trial. Resting state fMRI scans were performed before and after a psychosocial stress task and exploratively analyzed for amygdala centered RSFC. Effects of Nx4 on stress-induced RSFC changes were evaluated and correlated to TA levels. A subgroup analysis based on TA scores was performed.

RESULTS

Multiple linear regression analysis revealed a significant correlation between TA and Nx4 effect on stress-induced RSFC changes between right amygdala and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) and ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). For participants with above average TA, a significant amelioration of the stress-induced RSFC changes was observed.

CONCLUSIONS

The data add evidence to the hypothesis that Nx4's clinical efficacy is based on a dampened activation of the neural stress network, with a greater neural response in subjects with anxious personality traits. Further studies assessing clinically relevant outcome measures in parallel to fMRI are encouraged to evaluate the real-world benefit of Nx4. Trial registration NCT02602275.

Prenatal Maternal Distress During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Associations With Infant Brain Connectivity

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantially elevated distress in pregnant individuals, which has the potential to affect the developing infant brain. Our main objective was to understand how prenatal distress was related to infant brain structure and function and whether social support moderated the associations.

METHODS

The Pregnancy during the COVID-19 Pandemic (PdP) cohort study collected Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Anxiety scale, Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and Social Support Effectiveness Questionnaire data from a population-based sample of pregnant individuals living in Canada (N = 8602). For a subsample of participants, their infants (n = 75) underwent magnetic resonance imaging at 3 months of age to examine whether prenatal maternal distress was associated with infant brain architecture, including the role of social support as a potential protective factor.

RESULTS

Overall, 33.4% of participants demonstrated clinically elevated depression symptoms and 47.1% of participants demonstrated clinically elevated anxiety symptoms. We identified lower social support as a significant predictor of clinically elevated prenatal maternal distress (t8598 = -22.3, p < .001). Fifty-eight diffusion image datasets (20 female/38 male, 92 ± 14 days old) and 41 functional datasets (13 female/28 male, 92 ± 14 days old) were included in our analysis after removal of poor-quality images and infants without postpartum maternal distress scores. We found significant relationships between prenatal maternal distress and infant amygdala-prefrontal microstructural and functional connectivity measures, and we demonstrate for the first time that social support moderates these relationships.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest a potentially long-lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and show that social support acts as a possible mediator not just for pregnant individuals but also developing infants. These findings provide timely evidence to inform clinical practice and policy surrounding the care of pregnant individuals and highlight the importance of social support.

Increased amygdala and decreased frontolimbic r esting- s tate functional connectivity in children with aggressive behavior

Childhood maladaptive aggression is associated with disrupted functional connectivity within amygdala-prefrontal circuitry. In this study, neural correlates of childhood aggression were probed using the intrinsic connectivity distribution, a voxel-wise metric of global resting-state brain connectivity. This sample included 38 children with aggressive behavior (26 boys, 12 girls) ages 8-16 years and 21 healthy controls (14 boys, 6 girls) matched for age and IQ. Functional MRI data were acquired during resting state, and differential patterns of intrinsic functional connectivity were tested in a priori regions of interest implicated in the pathophysiology of aggressive behavior. Next, correlational analyses tested for associations between functional connectivity and severity of aggression measured by the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire in children with aggression. Children with aggressive behavior showed increased global connectivity in the bilateral amygdala relative to controls. Greater severity of aggressive behavior was associated with decreasing global connectivity in the dorsal anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Follow-up seed analysis revealed that aggression was also positively correlated with left amygdala connectivity with the dorsal anterior cingulate, ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortical regions. These results highlight the potential role of connectivity of the amygdala and medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices in modulating the severity of aggressive behavior in treatment-seeking children.

Editorial: The Preschool Emotional Brain

There is broad consensus that children's ability to regulate emotion, particularly negative affect, can have enormous implications for the cascading processes underlying social and emotional development. With the burgeoning autonomy of toddlerhood comes a rudimentary understanding of the varieties of emotional experience, and initial awareness that a child's actions can augment or attenuate the intensity of those experiences. Successful forays into emotion regulation are crucial for healthy psychological development, allowing children to accommodate life's difficulties by purposefully altering their emotional state (ie, coping) when necessary. By contrast, persistent negative affect in childhood is known to increase the risk for depression by late adolescence.¹ Neuroimaging studies in youth and adults have implicated a key circuit in the generation and regulation of negative affect including the amygdala, a subcortical structure that detects emotionally salient information, and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a cortical region known to exert regulatory influence on the amygdala. Synchronous activation of these regions, reflecting functional transmission of information between them, is conceptually and empirically linked to individual differences in the intensity and purposeful modulation of emotion.² Furthermore, amygdala reactivity is associated with negative affect in preschoolers,³ whereas emotion-related amygdala-mPFC connectivity may shape the subsequent development of resting (intrinsic) amygdala-mPFC connectivity, particularly in childhood.⁴.

Neighborhood Poverty and Amygdala Response to Negative Face

Introduction

Considerable research has established a link between socioeconomic status (SES) and brain function. While studies have shown a link between poverty status and amygdala response to negative stimuli, a paucity of knowledge exists on whether neighborhood poverty is also independently associated with amygdala hyperactive response to negative stimuli.

Purpose

Using functional brain imaging data, this study tested the association between neighborhood SES and the amygdala's response to negative stimuli. Considering race as a sociological rather than a biological construct, we also explored racial heterogeneity in this association between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White youth.

Methods

We borrowed the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The sample was 2,490 nine to ten year old non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White adolescents. The independent variable was neighborhood income which was treated as a continuous measure. The primary outcomes were the right and left amygdala response to negative face during an N-Back task. Age, sex, race, marital status, and family SES were the covariates. To analyze the data, we used linear regression models.

Results

Low neighborhood income was independently associated with a higher level of amygdala response to negative face. Similar results were seen for the right and left amygdala. These effects were significant net of race, age, sex, marital status, and family SES. An association between low neighborhood SES and higher left but not right amygdala response to negative face could be observed for non-Hispanic Black youth. No association between neighborhood SES and left or right amygdala response to negative face could be observed for non-Hispanic White youth.

Conclusions

For American youth, particularly non-Hispanic Black youth, living in a poor neighborhood predicts the left amygdala reaction to negative face. This result suggested that Black youth who live in poor neighborhoods are at a high risk of poor emotion regulation. This finding has implications for policy making to reduce inequalities in undesired behavioral and emotional outcomes. Policy solutions to health inequalities should address inequalities in neighborhood SES.