Functional Alterations in Cerebellar Functional Connectivity in Anxiety Disorders
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Functional Alterations in Cerebellar Functional Connectivity in Anxiety Disorders Yoon Ji Lee 1 & Xavier Guell 2 & Nicholas A. Hubbard 3,4 & Viviana Siless 5 & Isabelle R. Frosch 4 & Mathias Goncalves 4 & Nicole Lo 4 & Atira Nair 1 & Satrajit S. Ghosh 5,6 & Stefan G. Hofmann 7 & Randy P. Auerbach 8 & Diego A. Pizzagalli 9 & Anastasia Yendiki 5,6 & John D.E. Gabrieli 4 & Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli 1,4 & Sheeba Arnold Anteraper 1 Accepted: 8 November 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Adolescents with anxiety disorders exhibit excessive emotional and somatic arousal. Neuroimaging studies have shown abnormal cerebral cortical activation and connectivity in this patient population. The specific role of cerebellar output circuitry, specifically the dentate nuclei (DN), in adolescent anxiety disorders remains largely unexplored. Resting-state functional connectivity analyses have parcellated the DN, the major output nuclei of the cerebellum, into three functional territories (FTs) that include default-mode, salience-motor, and visual networks. The objective of this study was to understand whether FTs of the DN are implicated in adolescent anxiety disorders. Forty-one adolescents (mean age 15.19 ± 0.82, 26 females) with one or more anxiety disorders and 55 age- and gender-matched healthy controls completed resting-state fMRI scans and a self-report survey on anxiety symptoms. Seed-to-voxel functional connectivity analyses were performed using the FTs from DN parcellation. Brain connectivity metrics were then correlated with State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) measures within each group. Adolescents with an anxiety disorder showed significant hyperconnectivity between salience-motor DN FT and cerebral cortical salience-motor regions compared to controls. Salience-motor FT connectivity with cerebral cortical sensorimotor regions was significantly correlated with STAI-trait scores in HC (R2 = 0.41). Here, we report DN functional connectivity differences in adolescents diagnosed with anxiety, as well as in HC with variable degrees of anxiety traits. These observations highlight the relevance of DN as a potential clinical and sub-clinical marker of anxiety. Keywords Anxiety . Cerebellum . Dentate nucleus . Salience network . Motor network
Introduction * Sheeba Arnold Anteraper [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, ISEC 672D, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA
2
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
3
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA
4
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
5
Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
6
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
7
Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
8
Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
9
McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA, USA
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses among adolescents, with the median age of onset at 11 years and a lifetime prevalence rate of 31.9% during adolescence [1, 2]. Adolescenc
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