The Structural Integrity of an Amygdala–Prefrontal Pathway Predicts Trait Anxiety

Here, we used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and showed that the strength of an axonal pathway identified between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex predicted individual differences in trait anxiety. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) functional localizer that has been shown to produce reliable amygdala activation was collected in 20 psychiatrically healthy subjects. Voxelwise regression analyses using this fMRI amygdala reactivity as a regressor were performed on fractional anisotropy images derived from DTI. This analysis identified a white matter pathway between the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Individual differences in the structural integrity of this putative amygdala–prefrontal pathway were inversely correlated with trait anxiety levels (i.e., higher pathway strength predicted lower anxiety). More generally, this study illustrates a strategy for combining fMRI and DTI to identify individual differences in structural pathways that predict behavioral outcomes.

• Publication year

  2009

• Venue

  Journal of Neuroscience

• Publication date

  2009-09-16

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2335-09.2009PMID 19759308PMCID PMC2791525
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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