Developmental pathways to amygdala-prefrontal function and internalizing symptoms in adolescence
Open Access
- 11 November 2012
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Neuroscience
- Vol. 15 (12), 1736-1741
- https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3257
Abstract
The authors assessed the contributions of early life stress (ELS) and childhood cortisol levels to adolescent resting-state functional connectivity. In females, ELS predicted increased cortisol levels in childhood, which predicted decreased amygdala-ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) functional connectivity. Amygdala-vmPFC connectivity was inversely correlated with anxious sympotms and positively correlated with depressive symptoms. Early life stress (ELS) and function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis predict later psychopathology. Animal studies and cross-sectional human studies suggest that this process might operate through amygdala–ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) circuitry implicated in the regulation of emotion. Here we prospectively investigated the roles of ELS and childhood basal cortisol amounts in the development of adolescent resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC), assessed by functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (fcMRI), in the amygdala-PFC circuit. In females only, greater ELS predicted increased childhood cortisol levels, which predicted decreased amygdala-vmPFC rs-FC 14 years later. For females, adolescent amygdala-vmPFC functional connectivity was inversely correlated with concurrent anxiety symptoms but positively associated with depressive symptoms, suggesting differing pathways from childhood cortisol levels function through adolescent amygdala-vmPFC functional connectivity to anxiety and depression. These data highlight that, for females, the effects of ELS and early HPA-axis function may be detected much later in the intrinsic processing of emotion-related brain circuits.This publication has 46 references indexed in Scilit:
- Social influences on neuroplasticity: stress and interventions to promote well-beingNature Neuroscience, 2012
- Influence of early life stress on later hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis functioning and its covariation with mental health symptoms: A study of the allostatic process from childhood into adolescenceDevelopment and Psychopathology, 2011
- The structural and functional connectivity of the amygdala: From normal emotion to pathological anxietyBehavioural Brain Research, 2011
- Larger amygdala but no change in hippocampal volume in 10-year-old children exposed to maternal depressive symptomatology since birthProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011
- Neurocircuitry of Mood DisordersNeuropsychopharmacology, 2009
- Common and Distinct Amygdala-Function Perturbations in Depressed vs Anxious AdolescentsArchives of General Psychiatry, 2009
- The default mode network and self-referential processes in depressionProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
- A new method for improving functional-to-structural MRI alignment using local Pearson correlationNeuroImage, 2009
- Environmental influences on family similarity in afternoon cortisol levels: Twin and parent–offspring designsPsychoneuroendocrinology, 2006
- Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternativesStructural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 1999