When extreme, anxiety-a state of distress and arousal prototypically evoked by uncertain danger-can be debilitating. Uncertain anticipation is a shared feature of situations that elicit signs and ...symptoms of anxiety across psychiatric disorders, species, and assays. Despite the profound significance of anxiety for human health and wellbeing, the neurobiology of uncertain-threat anticipation remains unsettled. Leveraging a paradigm adapted from animal research and optimized for fMRI signal decomposition, we examined the neural circuits engaged during the anticipation of temporally uncertain and certain threat in 99 men and women. Results revealed that the neural systems recruited by uncertain and certain threat anticipation are anatomically colocalized in frontocortical regions, extended amygdala, and periaqueductal gray. Comparison of the threat conditions demonstrated that this circuitry can be fractionated, with frontocortical regions showing relatively stronger engagement during the anticipation of uncertain threat, and the extended amygdala showing the reverse pattern. Although there is widespread agreement that the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and dorsal amygdala-the two major subdivisions of the extended amygdala-play a critical role in orchestrating adaptive responses to potential danger, their precise contributions to human anxiety have remained contentious. Follow-up analyses demonstrated that these regions show statistically indistinguishable responses to temporally uncertain and certain threat anticipation. These observations provide a framework for conceptualizing anxiety and fear, for understanding the functional neuroanatomy of threat anticipation in humans, and for accelerating the development of more effective intervention strategies for pathological anxiety.
Anxiety-an emotion prototypically associated with the anticipation of uncertain harm-has profound significance for public health, yet the underlying neurobiology remains unclear. Leveraging a novel neuroimaging paradigm in a relatively large sample, we identify a core circuit responsive to both uncertain and certain threat anticipation, and show that this circuitry can be fractionated into subdivisions with a bias for one kind of threat or the other. The extended amygdala occupies center stage in neuropsychiatric models of anxiety, but its functional architecture has remained contentious. Here we demonstrate that its major subdivisions show statistically indistinguishable responses to temporally uncertain and certain threat. Collectively, these observations indicate the need to revise how we think about the neurobiology of anxiety and fear.
Social anxiety lies on a continuum, and young adults with elevated symptoms are at risk for developing a range of psychiatric disorders. Yet relatively little is known about the factors that govern ...the hour-by-hour experience and expression of social anxiety in the real world.
Here we used smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to intensively sample emotional experience across different social contexts in the daily lives of 228 young adults selectively recruited to represent a broad spectrum of social anxiety symptoms.
Leveraging data from over 11 000 real-world assessments, our results highlight the central role of close friends, family members, and romantic partners. The presence of such close companions was associated with enhanced mood, yet socially anxious individuals had fewer confidants and spent less time with the close companions that they do have. Although higher levels of social anxiety were associated with a general worsening of mood, socially anxious individuals appear to derive larger benefits - lower levels of negative affect, anxiety, and depression - from their close companions. In contrast, variation in social anxiety was unrelated to the amount of time spent with strangers, co-workers, and acquaintances; and we uncovered no evidence of emotional hypersensitivity to these less-familiar individuals.
These findings provide a framework for understanding the deleterious consequences of social anxiety in emerging adulthood and set the stage for developing improved intervention strategies.
Diverse cases regarding the impact, with its related factors, of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health have been reported in previous studies. In this study, multivariable datasets were collected ...from 751 college students who could be easily affected by pandemics based on the complex relationships between various mental health factors. We utilized quantum annealing (QA)-based feature selection algorithms that were executed by commercial D-Wave quantum computers to determine the changes in the relative importance of the associated factors before and after the pandemic. Multivariable linear regression (MLR) and XGBoost models were also applied to validate the QA-based algorithms. Based on the experimental results, we confirm that QA-based algorithms have comparable capabilities in factor analysis research to the MLR models that have been widely used in previous studies. Furthermore, the performance of the QA-based algorithms was validated through the important factor results from the algorithms. Pandemic-related factors (e.g., confidence in the social system) and psychological factors (e.g. decision-making in uncertain situations) were more important in post-pandemic conditions. Although the results should be validated using other mental health variables or national datasets, this study will serve as a reference for researchers regarding the use of the quantum annealing approach in factor analysis with validation through real-world survey dataset analysis.
Negative affect is a fundamental dimension of human emotion. When extreme, it contributes to a variety of adverse outcomes, from physical and mental illness to divorce and premature death. ...Mechanistic work in animals and neuroimaging research in humans and monkeys have begun to reveal the broad contours of the neural circuits governing negative affect, but the relevance of these discoveries to everyday distress remains incompletely understood. Here, we used a combination of approaches—including neuroimaging assays of threat anticipation and emotional-face perception and more than 10,000 momentary assessments of emotional experience—to demonstrate that individuals who showed greater activation in a cingulo-opercular circuit during an anxiety-eliciting laboratory paradigm experienced lower levels of stressor-dependent distress in their daily lives (ns = 202–208 university students). Extended amygdala activation was not significantly related to momentary negative affect. These observations provide a framework for understanding the neurobiology of negative affect in the laboratory and in the real world.
It remains unclear whether worry and rumination represent the same functional process, or if they are unique constructs. The current study examined the relationship between worry and rumination, ...focusing on the potential utility of a bi-factor approach as an alternative to “common” vs. “distinctive” approaches. The results indicated that the structural relationship between worry and rumination is best represented by a bi-factor model (compared to single-factor and two-factor models), which is comprised of a single factor that captures common variance in worry and rumination, as well as separate worry-specific and rumination-specific factors that capture unique variance. Furthermore, three orthogonal factors derived from the bi-factor model showed diverging associations with motivational traits (avoidance and approach temperament) and distinct anxiety/depression symptoms. The bi-factor conceptualization provides a framework for reconciling the diverging perspectives regarding worry and rumination, suggesting the need to pay attention to both common and unique aspects of worry and rumination.
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in a dramatic increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression globally. Although the impact on the mental health of young adults was especially ...strong, its underlying mechanisms remain elusive.
Using a network approach, the present study investigated the putative pathways between pandemic-related factors and anxiety and depressive symptoms among young adults in South Korea and the U.S. Network analyses were conducted on cross-country data collected during the COVID-19 lockdown period (
= 1,036). Our model included depression symptoms (PHQ-9), generalized anxiety symptoms (GAD-7), and COVID-19-related factors (e.g., COVID-19-related traumatic stress, pandemic concerns, access to medical/mental health services).
The overall structure of pandemic-to-symptom networks of South Korea and the U.S. were found to be similar. In both countries, COVID-related stress and negative future anticipation (an anxiety symptom) were identified as bridging nodes between pandemic-related factors and psychological distress. In addition, worry-related symptoms (e.g., excessive worry, uncontrollable worry) were identified as key contributors in maintaining the overall pandemic-to-symptom network in both countries.
The similar network structures and patterns observed in both countries imply that there may exist a stable relationship between the pandemic and internalizing symptoms above and beyond the sociocultural differences. The current findings provide new insights into the common potential pathway between the pandemic and internalizing symptoms in South Korea and in the U.S. and inform policymakers and mental health professionals of potential intervention targets to alleviate internalizing symptoms.
Few studies have investigated how attentional control is affected by transient affective states while taking individual differences in affective traits into consideration. In this study, participants ...completed a color-word Stroop task immediately after undergoing a positive, neutral or negative affective context manipulation (ACM). Behavioral performance was unaffected by any ACM considered in isolation. For individuals high in trait negative affect (NA), performance was impaired by the negative but not the positive or neutral ACM. Neuroimaging results indicate that activity in primarily top-down control regions of the brain (inferior frontal gyrus and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) was suppressed in the presence of emotional arousal (both negative and positive ACMs). This effect appears to have been exacerbated or offset by co-occurring activity in other top-down control regions (parietal) and emotion processing regions (orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala and nucleus accumbens) as a function of the valence of state affect (positive or negative) and trait affect (trait NA or trait PA). Neuroimaging results are consistent with behavioral findings. In combination, they indicate both additive and interactive influences of trait and state affect on top-down control of attention.
In two studies with college student participants, we explored the ways in which worry and rumination may be similar or distinct. Towards that end, as part of our research, we developed new laboratory ...measures of worry and rumination. In Study 1, we examined how the new lab instruments we developed differentiate worry versus rumination and initiation versus termination. We did so by comparing them with two other measurement methods of worry and rumination, ecological momentary assessment and questionnaires. We found that the laboratory measures were reasonably able to differentiate worry from rumination, but not initiation from termination. In Study 2, we further examined the relationship between attentional biases to threat/danger and loss/failure (using the dot probe task) and both worry and rumination to explore the nature of distinctions between worry and rumination. We found different patterns of attentional bias associated with worry and rumination. Worry was associated with bias away from threat. In contrast, rumination was associated with bias toward loss/failure. The results of the two studies suggest that there are some meaningful differences between worry and rumination. The implications of the current findings are discussed.
Recent research found that a bifactor structure provides the best fit for maladaptive repetitive thinking. The present research attempted to: (a) replicate this finding with an alternative measure of ...rumination; and (b) to extend it by testing the best fitting model including both adaptive and maladaptive repetitive thinking using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire and the Rumination and Reflection Questionnaire. Using data from 14 independent datasets (N = 4711), the fit of three worry and rumination models and five worry, rumination, and reflection models were compared. The validity of the latent factors of the best fitting model of worry, rumination, and reflection was examined with several factor integrity tests and by examining their associations with theoretically relevant constructs. Results indicate that a bifactor structure provides the best fit for worry, rumination, and reflection. Furthermore, four orthogonal factors derived from the bifactor model showed diverging associations with distress, personality, emotion regulation, emotional awareness, and intolerance of uncertainty.
•Replication of the structure of worry and rumination•Extension of repetitive thinking structure includes reflection•Bifactor structure provides the best fit for repetitive thinking•Maladaptive repetitive thinking is linked to inflexibility and uncontrollability•Adaptive repetitive thinking is characterized by openness
When extreme, anxiety can become debilitating. Anxiety disorders, which often first emerge early in development, are common and challenging to treat, yet the underlying mechanisms have only recently ...begun to come into focus. Here, we review new insights into the nature and biological bases of dispositional negativity, a fundamental dimension of childhood temperament and adult personality and a prominent risk factor for the development of pediatric and adult anxiety disorders. Converging lines of epidemiological, neurobiological, and mechanistic evidence suggest that dispositional negativity increases the likelihood of psychopathology via specific neurocognitive mechanisms, including attentional biases to threat and deficits in executive control. Collectively, these observations provide an integrative translational framework for understanding the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders in adults and youth and set the stage for developing improved intervention strategies.
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