Why anxious individuals fail to control emotional behaviour is not well understood. Here, the authors show that highly anxious individuals have a more excitable lateral frontopolar cortex, and fail to recruit this region during emotional action control.

Abstract

Anxious individuals consistently fail in controlling emotional behavior, leading to excessive avoidance, a trait that prevents learning through exposure. Although the origin of this failure is unclear, one candidate system involves control of emotional actions, coordinated through lateral frontopolar cortex (FPl) via amygdala and sensorimotor connections. Using structural, functional, and neurochemical evidence, we show how FPl-based emotional action control fails in highly-anxious individuals. Their FPl is overexcitable, as indexed by GABA/glutamate ratio at rest, and receives stronger amygdalofugal projections than non-anxious male participants. Yet, high-anxious individuals fail to recruit FPl during emotional action control, relying instead on dorsolateral and medial prefrontal areas. This functional anatomical shift is proportional to FPl excitability and amygdalofugal projections strength. The findings characterize circuit-level vulnerabilities in anxious individuals, showing that even mild emotional challenges can saturate FPl neural range, leading to a neural bottleneck in the control of emotional action tendencies.

Summary

In summary, we show that, in humans, anxiety is associated with inefficient involvement of FPl during emotional control. We provide evidence for a functional anatomical shift in the implementation of emotional control in anxious individuals, from FPl to dlPFC. This functional anatomical shift is linked to changes in the strength of amygdalofugal projections to FPl and complemented by FPl overexcitability. This shift might explain why highly anxious individuals struggle to implement flexible emotional action selection during challenging emotional situations, and it suggests interventions to normalize FPl activity in anxiety disorders.

  • ɔiƚoxɘupEnglish
    5•1 year ago

    I have trouble understanding these types of papers and so I thought I’d ask gpt4 for some help with that. Here’s what I got, I figured I’d share:

    The paper titled “Anxious individuals shift emotion control from lateral frontal pole to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex” discusses the neural mechanisms underlying the control of emotional behavior in individuals with anxiety. Here’s a summary of the main findings:

    1. Background:

      • Anxious individuals often struggle to control emotional behavior, leading to excessive avoidance. This trait hinders learning through exposure.
      • The lateral frontopolar cortex (FPl) is believed to coordinate the control of emotional actions through connections with the amygdala and sensorimotor areas.
      • The study aims to understand the functional, structural, and neurochemical properties of the FPl that might explain the differences in emotional behavior control between high-anxiety individuals and their non-anxious peers.

    2. Main Findings:

      • The FPl in highly anxious individuals is overexcitable, as indicated by the GABA/glutamate ratio at rest.
      • High-anxious individuals have stronger connections from the amygdala to the FPl than non-anxious male participants.
      • Despite these connections, high-anxious individuals do not effectively recruit the FPl during emotional action control. Instead, they rely on the dorsolateral and medial prefrontal areas.
      • This shift in neural activity is proportional to the excitability of the FPl and the strength of the connections from the amygdala.
      • The findings suggest that even mild emotional challenges can overwhelm the FPl in anxious individuals, leading to a “neural bottleneck” in controlling emotional actions.

    3. Experimental Design:

      • The researchers used a combination of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS), Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI), and functional MRI to study the neurochemical, structural, and functional properties of the FPl during emotional action control.
      • Participants were exposed to a mild emotional challenge that required them to control their emotional action tendencies. The performance of high-anxiety participants was compared to a control group of non-anxious peers.
      • Both groups performed a social approach-avoidance task where they had to approach or avoid happy and angry faces by manipulating a joystick. Controlling these emotional action tendencies activated different brain regions in the two groups.

    4. Implications:

      • The study identifies neural vulnerabilities in anxious individuals, suggesting potential targets for interventions to enhance control over emotional actions.
      • Understanding these neural mechanisms can provide insights into the development of novel treatments for anxiety disorders.

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