Effective Connectivity Between Broca's Area and Amygdala As a Mechanism of Top-down Control in Worry

Overview

Journal Clin Psychol Sci

Publisher Sage Publications

Specialty Psychiatry

Date 2020 Sep 28

PMID 32983628

Citations 3

Authors

Anika Guha

Jeffrey Spielberg

Jessica Lake

Tzvetan Popov

Wendy Heller

Cindy M Yee

Gregory A Miller

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Individuals higher in trait worry exhibit increased activation in Broca's area during inhibitory processing tasks. To identify whether such activity represents an adaptive mechanism supporting top-down control, functional and effective connectivity of Broca's area were investigated during a task of inhibitory control. fMRI data obtained from 106 participants performing an emotion-word Stroop task were examined using psychophysiological interaction and Granger Causality (GC) analyses. Findings revealed greater directed connectivity from Broca's to amygdala in the presence of emotional distraction. Furthermore, a predictive relationship was observed between worry and the asymmetry in effective connectivity, with worriers exhibiting greater directed connectivity from Broca's to amygdala. When performing the task, worriers with greater GC directional asymmetry were more accurate than worriers with less asymmetry. Present findings indicate that individuals with elevated trait worry employ a mechanism of top-down control in which communication from Broca's to amygdala fosters successful compensation for interference effects.

Citing Articles

Individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty is primarily linked to the structure of inferior frontal regions.

Carlson 2nd K, Smolker H, Smith L, Snyder H, Synder H, Hankin B Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2025; .

PMID: 39870976 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-024-01262-0.

Oscillatory network markers of subcallosal cingulate deep brain stimulation for depression.

Scherer M, Harmsen I, Samuel N, Elias G, Germann J, Boutet A Brain Stimul. 2023; 16(6):1764-1775.

PMID: 38061548 PMC: 10947774. DOI: 10.1016/j.brs.2023.11.016.

The dimensional structure of internalizing psychopathology: Relation to diagnostic categories.

Snyder H, Silton R, Hankin B, Smolker H, Kaiser R, Banich M Clin Psychol Sci. 2023; 11(6):1044-1063.

PMID: 37982000 PMC: 10655959. DOI: 10.1177/21677026221119483.

Domain-general and domain-specific functional networks of Broca's area underlying language processing.

Bulut T Brain Behav. 2023; 13(7):e3046.

PMID: 37132333 PMC: 10338813. DOI: 10.1002/brb3.3046.

References

Hirsch C, Mathews A . A cognitive model of pathological worry. Behav Res Ther. 2012; 50(10):636-46. PMC: 3444754. DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2012.06.007. View

Mathews A, Ridgeway V, Williamson D . Evidence for attention to threatening stimuli in depression. Behav Res Ther. 1996; 34(9):695-705. DOI: 10.1016/0005-7967(96)00046-0. View

Mathews A, MacLeod C . Selective processing of threat cues in anxiety states. Behav Res Ther. 1985; 23(5):563-9. DOI: 10.1016/0005-7967(85)90104-4. View

Meyer T, Miller M, Metzger R, Borkovec T . Development and validation of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. Behav Res Ther. 1990; 28(6):487-95. DOI: 10.1016/0005-7967(90)90135-6. View

Sass S, Heller W, Stewart J, Silton R, Edgar J, Fisher J . Time course of attentional bias in anxiety: emotion and gender specificity. Psychophysiology. 2009; 47(2):247-59. PMC: 3073148. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00926.x. View

Luo Q, Ge T, Grabenhorst F, Feng J, Rolls E . Attention-dependent modulation of cortical taste circuits revealed by Granger causality with signal-dependent noise. PLoS Comput Biol. 2013; 9(10):e1003265. PMC: 3808464. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003265. View

Zatorre R, Meyer E, Gjedde A, Evans A . PET studies of phonetic processing of speech: review, replication, and reanalysis. Cereb Cortex. 1996; 6(1):21-30. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/6.1.21. View

Miller G . Mistreating Psychology in the Decades of the Brain. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2011; 5(6):716-43. PMC: 3177535. DOI: 10.1177/1745691610388774. View

Stokes P, Purdon P . A study of problems encountered in Granger causality analysis from a neuroscience perspective. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017; 114(34):E7063-E7072. PMC: 5576801. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704663114. View

10.

Ottaviani C, Borlimi R, Brighetti G, Caselli G, Favaretto E, Giardini I . Worry as an adaptive avoidance strategy in healthy controls but not in pathological worriers. Int J Psychophysiol. 2014; 93(3):349-55. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.05.010. View

11.

Popov T, Westner B, Silton R, Sass S, Spielberg J, Rockstroh B . Time Course of Brain Network Reconfiguration Supporting Inhibitory Control. J Neurosci. 2018; 38(18):4348-4356. PMC: 5932643. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2639-17.2018. View

12.

Johnstone T, van Reekum C, Urry H, Kalin N, Davidson R . Failure to regulate: counterproductive recruitment of top-down prefrontal-subcortical circuitry in major depression. J Neurosci. 2007; 27(33):8877-84. PMC: 6672169. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2063-07.2007. View

13.

Berenbaum H . An initiation-termination two-phase model of worrying. Clin Psychol Rev. 2010; 30(8):962-75. DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2010.06.011. View

14.

Banks S, Eddy K, Angstadt M, Nathan P, Phan K . Amygdala-frontal connectivity during emotion regulation. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2008; 2(4):303-12. PMC: 2566753. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsm029. View

15.

Bartholomew M, Yee C, Heller W, Miller G, Spielberg J . Reconfiguration of brain networks supporting inhibition of emotional challenge. Neuroimage. 2018; 186:350-357. PMC: 6372757. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.10.066. View

16.

Nelson J, Reuter-Lorenz P, Sylvester C, Jonides J, Smith E . Dissociable neural mechanisms underlying response-based and familiarity-based conflict in working memory. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003; 100(19):11171-5. PMC: 196946. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1334125100. View

17.

Winkler A, Ridgway G, Webster M, Smith S, Nichols T . Permutation inference for the general linear model. Neuroimage. 2014; 92:381-97. PMC: 4010955. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.01.060. View

18.

January D, Trueswell J, Thompson-Schill S . Co-localization of stroop and syntactic ambiguity resolution in Broca's area: implications for the neural basis of sentence processing. J Cogn Neurosci. 2009; 21(12):2434-44. PMC: 2762484. DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2008.21179. View

19.

Beaudreau S, MacKay-Brandt A, Reynolds J . Application of a cognitive neuroscience perspective of cognitive control to late-life anxiety. J Anxiety Disord. 2013; 27(6):559-66. PMC: 3762945. DOI: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2013.03.006. View

20.

Silton R, Heller W, Engels A, Towers D, Spielberg J, Edgar J . Depression and anxious apprehension distinguish frontocingulate cortical activity during top-down attentional control. J Abnorm Psychol. 2011; 120(2):272-85. PMC: 4406398. DOI: 10.1037/a0023204. View