Search

Compared with neural biomarkers of risk for mental illness, little is known about biomarkers of resilience. We explore if greater executive control-related prefrontal activity may function as a resilience biomarker by "rescuing" risk associated with higher threat-related amygdala and lower reward-related ventral striatum activity. Functional MRI was used to assay baseline threat-related amygdala, reward-related ventral striatum, and executive control-related prefrontal activity in 120 young adult volunteers. Participants provided self-reported mood and anxiety ratings at baseline and follow-up. A moderation model revealed a significant three-way interaction wherein higher amygdala and lower ventral striatum activity predicted increases in anxiety in those with average or low but not high prefrontal activity. This effect was specific to anxiety, with the neural biomarkers explaining ~10% of the variance in change over time, above and beyond baseline symptoms, sex, age, IQ, presence or absence of DMS-IV diagnosis, and both early and recent stress. Our findings are consistent with the importance of top-down executive control in adaptive regulation of negative emotions, and highlight a unique combination of neural biomarkers that may identify at-risk individuals for whom the adoption of strategies to improve executive control of negative emotions may prove particularly beneficial.

The experience of child maltreatment is a significant risk factor for the development of later internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety. This risk is particularly heightened after exposure to additional, more contemporaneous stress. While behavioral evidence exists for such "stress sensitization," little is known about the mechanisms mediating such relationships, particularly within the brain. Here we report that the experience of child maltreatment independent of recent life stress, gender, and age is associated with reduced structural integrity of the uncinate fasciculus, a major white matter pathway between the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, in young adults. We further demonstrate that individuals with lower uncinate fasciculus integrity at baseline who subsequently experience stressful life events report higher levels of internalizing symptomatology at follow-up. Our findings suggest a novel neurobiological mechanism linking child maltreatment with later internalizing symptoms, specifically altered structural connectivity within the brain's threat-detection and emotion-regulation circuitry.

To determine clinical and sociodemographic factors that are associated with major neuropsychiatric illnesses among brain tumor patients, we administered a modified version of the Brief Patient Health Questionnaire and a demographic data form to 363 adult neuro-oncology patients. Responses were analyzed to assess for associations between demographic variables, clinical variables, and symptoms consistent with diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder and/or depression. Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that female gender was associated with the presence of symptoms of anxiety, depression, and combined anxiety and depression. Lower WHO tumor grade classifications, lower education level, and a history of psychiatric illness also emerged as important predictors of symptoms consistent with anxiety and/or depression. Marital status and presence of past/current medical illness trended toward being significantly associated with depression alone. Patient use of psychiatric medication was not associated with any study variables. Results of the present study suggest several hypotheses to test with neuro-oncology patients in further longitudinal analyses, which would benefit from the inclusion of a wider range of neuropsychiatric symptoms in conjunction with neurocognitive and functional impairment variables.