Trait and state anxiety is marked by increased working memory-related parietal BOLD signal

Neural correlates of inhibitory control in the context of infant cry and paternal postpartum mental health

BACKGROUND

Inhibitory control, a form of self-regulation, may support sensitive parenting, but has been understudied in new fathers despite their pronounced risk for stress and mental health challenges.

METHODS

This study probed the neural correlates of inhibitory control and its associations to first-time fathers' postpartum mental health, focusing on depressive symptoms, state anxiety, and perceived stress. Six months after their child's birth, 38 fathers self-reported on their mood, anxiety, and stress, and performed a Go/No-Go fMRI task while listening to three sets of sounds (infant cry, pink noise, and silence).

RESULTS

Fathers' behavioral inhibition accuracy was consistent across the sound conditions, but their patterns of neural activation varied. Compared to the pink noise condition, fathers showed heightened engagement in prefrontal regulatory regions when self-regulating during the infant cry and silent conditions. When examining correct trials only, results in visual motor area and primary somatosensory cortex emerged only for infant cry and not for pink noise and silence. Moreover, fathers reporting higher levels of postpartum depression, state anxiety, and perceived stress showed greater activation in prefrontal regions when inhibiting during infant cry or silence.

CONCLUSION

This study is the first to underscore the complex interplay between the neural mechanisms related to inhibitory control and postpartum mental health and stress across varied auditory context, laying the groundwork for future research.

Translating Interventional Neuroscience to Suicide: It's About Time

Despite significant advances in psychiatric and psychological treatment over the last 30 years, suicide deaths have increased. Unfortunately, neuroscience insights have yielded few translational interventions that specifically target suicidal thoughts and behaviors. In our view, this is attributable to two factors. The first factor is our limited integration of neurocircuitry models with contemporary suicide theory. The second challenge is inherent to the variable nature of suicide risk over time. Few interventional neuroscience studies evaluate how temporal fluctuations in risk affect treatment, despite evidence that temporality is a key component distinguishing suicide phenotypes. To wit, individual variability in risk trajectories may provide different treatment targets to engage as a patient moves between suicidal ideation and attempt. Here, we first review contemporary ideation-to-action theories of suicide from a neurobiological perspective, focusing on valence and executive function circuits and the key role of state-induced (e.g., within stressful contexts) functional modulation on longitudinal risk trajectories. We then describe neural correlates of suicide reduction following various interventions, ranging from circuit specific (i.e., transcranial magnetic stimulation) to broader pharmacological (i.e., ketamine, lithium) to psychological (i.e., brief cognitive therapy). We then introduce novel strategies for tracking risk in naturalistic settings and real time using ecological momentary interventions. We provide a critical integration of the literature focusing on the intersection between targets and temporality, and we conclude by proposing novel research designs integrating real-time and biologically based interventions to generate novel strategies for future suicide reduction research.

An analysis of the brain structures underlying the link between pathological Internet use and anxiety

Pathological Internet use (PIU) is associated with various maladaptive problems and is becoming increasingly common among adolescents. Anxiety has been discovered as an important predictor of PIU, with the neural basis underlying the link between these two variables remaining unclear. In this study, PIU variations, individual anxiety levels, and T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance images (MRI) were collected from 95 healthy male adolescents. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was then applied to identify the brain regions related to individual variations in PIU, with mediation analyses being conducted to explore the relationship between brain structure, anxiety, and PIU. The results revealed that the PIU tendency is positively correlated with regional grey matter density (rGMD) in the right inferior parietal lobe (IPL), which is known to be involved in inhibitory control. Furthermore, the mediation analysis revealed that the rGMD in the right IPL mediates the association between anxiety and PIU, which is consistent with the mood enhancement theory and the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model. This mediation model suggests that individuals with higher anxiety might be more likely to use the Internet, with the rGMD in the right IPL being where the underlying cognitive mechanism of the relationship between these two variables lies. This study's findings possess implications for society's understandings of the correlations between anxiety and PIU from a brain structural perspective, which may then help in preventing the progression of PIU among adolescents.

The spontaneous activity and functional network of the occipital cortex is correlated with state anxiety in healthy adults

The occipital lobe has been implicated in anxiety disorder, however, its contributions to anxiety in healthy adults remain less clear. We conducted a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study to explore the relationship between the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), functional connectivity (FC), and state anxiety level in the healthy population. First, the results showed that the ALFF of the left inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) was negatively correlated with state anxiety. Furthermore, state anxiety was positively correlated with the FC between the left IOG and the right medial superior frontal gyrus and right cerebellum 8 area and negatively correlated with the FC between the left IOG and the left superior parietal gyrus. These results indicate that the occipital lobe of healthy individuals is involved in processing of anxiety in part through a frontal-parietal network.