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Mattoni M, Hopman HJ, Dadematthews A, Chan SSM, Olino TM. Specificity of associations between parental psychopathology and offspring brain structure. Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging 2023; 334:111684. [PMID: 37499380 PMCID: PMC10530479 DOI: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2023.111684] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/07/2023] [Revised: 05/23/2023] [Accepted: 06/27/2023] [Indexed: 07/29/2023]
Abstract
Multiple forms of parental psychopathology have been associated with differences in subcortical brain volume. However, few studies have considered the role of comorbidity. Here, we examine if alterations in child subcortical brain structure are specific to parental depression, anxiety, mania, or alcohol/substance use parental psychopathology, common across these disorders, or altered by a history of multiple disorders. We examined 6581 children aged 9 to 10 years old from the ABCD study with no history of mental disorders. We found several significant interactions such that the effects of a parental history of depression, anxiety, and substance use problems on amygdala and striatal volumes were moderated by comorbid parental history of another disorder. Interactions tended to suggest smaller volumes in the presence of a comorbid disorder. However, effect sizes were small, and no associations remained significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. Results suggest that associations between familial risk for psychopathology and offspring brain structure in 9-10-year-olds are modest, and relationships that do exist tend to implicate the amygdala and striatal regions and are moderated by a comorbid parental psychopathology history. Several methodological factors, including controlling for intracranial volume and other forms of parental psychopathology and excluding child psychopathology, likely contribute to inconsistencies in the literature.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Mattoni
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
| | - Helene J Hopman
- Department of Psychiatry, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR China
| | | | - Sandra S M Chan
- Department of Psychiatry, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR China
| | - Thomas M Olino
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
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2
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Ge R, Sassi R, Yatham LN, Frangou S. Neuroimaging profiling identifies distinct brain maturational subtypes of youth with mood and anxiety disorders. Mol Psychiatry 2023; 28:1072-1078. [PMID: 36577839 PMCID: PMC10005933 DOI: 10.1038/s41380-022-01925-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/31/2022] [Revised: 12/07/2022] [Accepted: 12/13/2022] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
Mood and anxiety disorders typically begin in adolescence and have overlapping clinical features but marked inter-individual variation in clinical presentation. The use of multimodal neuroimaging data may offer novel insights into the underlying brain mechanisms. We applied Heterogeneity Through Discriminative Analysis (HYDRA) to measures of regional brain morphometry, neurite density, and intracortical myelination to identify subtypes of youth, aged 9-10 years, with mood and anxiety disorders (N = 1931) compared to typically developing youth (N = 2823). We identified three subtypes that were robust to permutation testing and sample composition. Subtype 1 evidenced a pattern of imbalanced cortical-subcortical maturation compared to the typically developing group, with subcortical regions lagging behind prefrontal cortical thinning and myelination and greater cortical surface expansion globally. Subtype 2 displayed a pattern of delayed cortical maturation indicated by higher cortical thickness and lower cortical surface area expansion and myelination compared to the typically developing group. Subtype 3 showed evidence of atypical brain maturation involving globally lower cortical thickness and surface coupled with higher myelination and neural density. Subtype 1 had superior cognitive function in contrast to the other two subtypes that underperformed compared to the typically developing group. Higher levels of parental psychopathology, family conflict, and social adversity were common to all subtypes, with subtype 3 having the highest burden of adverse exposures. These analyses comprehensively characterize pre-adolescent mood and anxiety disorders, the biopsychosocial context in which they arise, and lay the foundation for the examination of the longitudinal evolution of the subtypes identified as the study sample transitions through adolescence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ruiyang Ge
- Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.,Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
| | - Roberto Sassi
- Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.,Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.,BC Children's Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada
| | - Lakshmi N Yatham
- Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.,Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
| | - Sophia Frangou
- Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. .,Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. .,Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
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Higher polygenic risk scores for anxiety disorders are associated with reduced area in the anterior cingulate gyrus. J Affect Disord 2023; 320:291-297. [PMID: 36150406 DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.09.041] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2022] [Revised: 08/27/2022] [Accepted: 09/19/2022] [Indexed: 02/02/2023]
Abstract
Anxiety disorders are heterogeneous, show a moderate genetic contribution and are associated with inconsistent cortical structure alterations. Here, we investigated whether genetic factors for anxiety disorders contribute to cortical alterations by conducting polygenic risk score (PRS) analyses. We calculated PRSs for anxiety disorders at several P value thresholds (from PT ≤ 5.0 × 10-8 to PT ≤ 1.0) based on the latest large-scale genome-wide association study of anxiety disorders from the UK biobank (25,453 cases; 58,113 controls) in an independent sample of psychiatrically and physically healthy subjects (n = 174). Using regression after adjusting for confounding factors, we tested whether these PRSs were associated with the surface area and cortical thickness in 34 bilateral brain regions extracted using FreeSurfer. A higher PRS for anxiety disorders at PT ≤ 1.0 was significantly associated with a reduced right caudal anterior cingulate area (beta = -0.25, puncorrected = 9.51 × 10-4, pcorrected = 0.032). PRSs based on more common SNPs, especially from PT ≤ 0.01 to PT ≤ 1.0, were associated with the right caudal anterior cingulate area (a maximum at PT ≤ 0.5: R2 = 0.066, beta = -0.27, puncorr = 3.81 × 10-4, pcorr = 0.013). Furthermore, individuals in the highest quartile for anxiety disorder PRS had lower surface area and volume in the right anterior cingulate gyrus than those in the lowest quartile. We suggest a shared genetic etiology between anxiety disorders and structural features of the anterior cingulate gyrus, possibly contributing to the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders via emotional dysregulations. Our findings suggest the potential usefulness of PRS to reduce pathological heterogeneity among anxiety disorders.
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Mendelian randomization analyses support causal relationships between brain imaging-derived phenotypes and risk of psychiatric disorders. Nat Neurosci 2022; 25:1519-1527. [PMID: 36216997 DOI: 10.1038/s41593-022-01174-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2021] [Accepted: 08/29/2022] [Indexed: 01/13/2023]
Abstract
Observational studies have reported the correlations between brain imaging-derived phenotypes (IDPs) and psychiatric disorders; however, whether the relationships are causal is uncertain. We conducted bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses to explore the causalities between 587 reliable IDPs (N = 33,224 individuals) and 10 psychiatric disorders (N = 9,725 to 161,405). We identified nine IDPs for which there was evidence of a causal influence on risk of schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa and bipolar disorder. For example, 1 s.d. increase in the orientation dispersion index of the forceps major was associated with 32% lower odds of schizophrenia risk. Reverse MR indicated that only genetically predicted schizophrenia was positively associated with two IDPs, the cortical surface area and the volume of the right pars orbitalis. We established the BrainMR database ( http://www.bigc.online/BrainMR/ ) to share our results. Our findings provide potential strategies for the prediction and intervention for psychiatric disorder risk at the brain-imaging level.
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Ma X, Yu W, Yao P, Zhu Y, Dai J, He X, Liu B, Xu C, Shao X, Fang J, Shen Z. Afferent and efferent projections of the rostral anterior cingulate cortex in young and middle-aged mice. Front Aging Neurosci 2022; 14:960868. [PMID: 36062147 PMCID: PMC9428471 DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.960868] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/03/2022] [Accepted: 07/25/2022] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
Research shows that across life, the incidence of mental illness is highest in the young. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health issues of the young in particular have received global attention. The rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) plays an important role in psychiatric disorders and chronic pain-psychiatric comorbidities. However, it remains unknown whether or how the afferent and efferent circuits of the rACC change with aging. In this study, we microinjected a retrograde tracer virus and an anterograde trans-monosynaptic virus into the rACC of young and middle-aged mice (both male and female), and systematically and quantitatively analyzed the whole-brain afferent and efferent connections of rACC at different ages and sexes. Notably, in young and middle-aged mice, afferents of the rACC belong to four groups of brain structures arising mainly from the amygdala [mainly basolateral amygdaloid nucleus (BLA)] and cerebral cortex (mainly orbital cortex), with a small part originating from the basal forebrain and thalamus. In contrast, efferents of the rACC belong to four groups of brain structures mainly projecting to the thalamus (mainly ventral anterior-lateral/ventromedial thalamic nucleus (VAL/VM)], with a very small part projecting to the amygdala, basal forebrain, and cerebral cortex. Compared with young mice, the BLA-rACC circuit in middle-aged mice (male and female) did not change significantly, while the rACC-VAL/VM circuit in middle-aged mice (male and female) decreased significantly. In conclusion, this study comprehensively analyzed the input-output neural projections of rACC in mice of different ages and sexes and provided preliminary evidence for further targeted research.
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Collins MA, Chung Y, Addington J, Bearden CE, Cadenhead KS, Cornblatt BA, Mathalon DH, McGlashan TH, Perkins DO, Seidman LJ, Tsuang MT, Walker EF, Woods SW, Cannon TD. Discriminatory experiences predict neuroanatomical changes and anxiety among healthy individuals and those at clinical high risk for psychosis. Neuroimage Clin 2021; 31:102757. [PMID: 34273790 PMCID: PMC8283423 DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2021.102757] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2021] [Revised: 06/23/2021] [Accepted: 07/03/2021] [Indexed: 01/14/2023]
Abstract
Individuals face discrimination based on characteristics including race/ethnicity, gender, age, and disability. Discriminatory experiences (DE) are associated with poor psychological health in the general population and with worse outcomes among individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR). Though the brain is sensitive to stress, and brain structural change is a well-documented precursor to psychosis, potential relationships between DE and brain structure among CHR or healthy individuals are not known. This report assessed whether lifetime DE are associated with cortical thinning and clinical outcomes across time, after controlling for discrimination-related demographic factors among CHR individuals who ultimately do (N = 57) and do not convert to psychosis (N = 451), and healthy comparison (N = 208) participants in the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study 2. Results indicate that DE are associated with thinner cortex across time in several cortical areas. Thickness in several right hemisphere regions partially mediates associations between DE and subsequent anxiety symptoms, but not attenuated positive symptoms of psychosis. This report provides the first evidence to date of an association between DE and brain structure in both CHR and healthy comparison individuals. Results also suggest that thinner cortex across time in areas linked with DE may partially explain associations between DE and cross-diagnostic indicators of psychological distress.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Yoonho Chung
- Department of Psychiatry, McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, USA
| | - Jean Addington
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
| | - Carrie E Bearden
- Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior & Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
| | | | | | - Daniel H Mathalon
- Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, USA; San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | | | - Diana O Perkins
- Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
| | - Larry J Seidman
- Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Ming T Tsuang
- Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, USA
| | - Elaine F Walker
- Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Scott W Woods
- Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Tyrone D Cannon
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
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Prefrontal cortex and amygdala anatomy in youth with persistent levels of harsh parenting practices and subclinical anxiety symptoms over time during childhood. Dev Psychopathol 2021; 34:957-968. [PMID: 33745487 DOI: 10.1017/s0954579420001716] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/18/2023]
Abstract
Childhood adversity and anxiety have been associated with increased risk for internalizing disorders later in life and with a range of brain structural abnormalities. However, few studies have examined the link between harsh parenting practices and brain anatomy, outside of severe maltreatment or psychopathology. Moreover, to our knowledge, there has been no research on parenting and subclinical anxiety symptoms which remain persistent over time during childhood (i.e., between 2.5 and 9 years old). Here, we examined data in 94 youth, divided into four cells based on their levels of coercive parenting (high / low) and of anxiety (high / low) between 2.5 and 9 years old. Anatomical images were analyzed using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and FreeSurfer. Smaller gray matter volumes in the prefrontal cortex regions and in the amygdala were observed in youth with high versus low levels of harsh parenting over time. In addition, we observed significant interaction effects between parenting practices and subclinical anxiety symptoms in rostral anterior cingulate cortical thickness and in amygdala volume. These youth should be followed further in time to identify which youth will or will not go on to develop an anxiety disorder, and to understand factors associated with the development of sustained anxiety psychopathology.
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Feurer C, Suor J, Jimmy J, Klumpp H, Monk CS, Phan KL, Burkhouse KL. Differences in cortical thinning across development among individuals with and without anxiety disorders. Depress Anxiety 2021; 38:372-381. [PMID: 33001526 PMCID: PMC7920900 DOI: 10.1002/da.23096] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2020] [Revised: 08/04/2020] [Accepted: 09/09/2020] [Indexed: 11/06/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Anxiety is associated with aberrant patterns of cortical thickness in regions implicated in emotion regulation. However, few studies have examined cortical thickness differences between individuals with anxiety and healthy controls (HCs) across development, particularly during childhood when cortical thinning begins and anxiety risk increases. A better understanding of age-related changes in cortical thickness patterns among anxious individuals is essential to develop plausible targets for early identification. METHODS The current study examined how age impacted differences in cortical thickness patterns between HCs and anxious individuals. Participants included 233 individuals (ages 7-35) with a current anxiety disorder (n = 149) or no lifetime history of psychopathology (n = 84). Cortical thickness of regions that are implicated in emotion regulation (ventromedial prefrontal cortex [vmPFC], rostral anterior cingulate [rACC], and insula) were assessed. RESULTS All regions showed significant thinning with age, except left rACC and right insula. However, rates of thinning differed among anxious and HC participants, with anxious participants demonstrating slower rates of right vmPFC thinning. Regions of significance analyses indicated that anxious, relative to HC, participants exhibited thinner right vmPFC before age 11, but thicker right vmPFC after age 24. CONCLUSIONS Current findings suggest that anxious individuals do not demonstrate normative right vmPFC cortical thinning, which may lead them to exhibit both thinner vmPFC in middle childhood and thicker vmPFC in adulthood compared with HCs. These findings may provide plausible targets for identification of anxiety risk that differ based on developmental stage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cope Feurer
- University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Jennifer Suor
- University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Jagan Jimmy
- University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Heide Klumpp
- University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry, Chicago, IL, USA
| | | | - K. Luan Phan
- University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry, Chicago, IL, USA,Ohio State University, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Columbus, OH, USA
| | - Katie L. Burkhouse
- University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry, Chicago, IL, USA
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Sheng L, Ma H, Shi Y, Dai Z, Zhong J, Chen F, Pan P. Cortical Thickness in Migraine: A Coordinate-Based Meta-Analysis. Front Neurosci 2021; 14:600423. [PMID: 33488349 PMCID: PMC7815689 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2020.600423] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2020] [Accepted: 11/25/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Cortical thickness (CTh) via surface-based morphometry analysis is a popular method to characterize brain morphometry. Many studies have been performed to investigate CTh abnormalities in migraine. However, the results from these studies were not consistent and even conflicting. These divergent results hinder us to obtain a clear picture of brain morphometry regarding CTh alterations in migraine. Coordinate-based meta-analysis (CBMA) is a promising technique to quantitatively pool individual neuroimaging studies to identify consistent brain areas involved. Electronic databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, WanFang, and SinoMed) and other sources (bioRxiv and reference lists of relevant articles and reviews) were systematically searched for studies that compared regional CTh differences between patients with migraine and healthy controls (HCs) up to May 15, 2020. A CBMA was performed using the Seed-based d Mapping with Permutation of Subject Images approach. In total, we identified 16 studies with 17 datasets reported that were eligible for the CBMA. The 17 datasets included 872 patients with migraine (average sample size 51.3, mean age 39.6 years, 721 females) and 949 HCs (average sample size 59.3, mean age 44.2 years, 680 females). The CBMA detected no statistically significant consistency of CTh alterations in patients with migraine relative to HCs. Sensitivity analysis and subgroup analysis verified this result to be robust. Metaregression analyses revealed that this CBMA result was not confounded by age, gender, aura, attack frequency per month, and illness duration. Our CBMA adds to the evidence of the replication crisis in neuroimaging research that is increasingly recognized. Many potential confounders, such as underpowered sample size, heterogeneous patient selection criteria, and differences in imaging collection and methodology, may contribute to the inconsistencies of CTh alterations in migraine, which merit attention before planning future research on this topic.
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Affiliation(s)
- LiQin Sheng
- Department of Neurology, Kunshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Suzhou, China
| | - HaiRong Ma
- Department of Neurology, Kunshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Suzhou, China
| | - YuanYuan Shi
- Department of Central Laboratory, School of Medicine, Affiliated Yancheng Hospital, Southeast University, Yancheng, China
| | - ZhenYu Dai
- Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Affiliated Yancheng Hospital, Southeast University, Yancheng, China
| | - JianGuo Zhong
- Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Affiliated Yancheng Hospital, Southeast University, Yancheng, China
| | - Fei Chen
- Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Affiliated Yancheng Hospital, Southeast University, Yancheng, China
| | - PingLei Pan
- Department of Central Laboratory, School of Medicine, Affiliated Yancheng Hospital, Southeast University, Yancheng, China
- Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Affiliated Yancheng Hospital, Southeast University, Yancheng, China
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