Developmental pathways to amygdala-prefrontal function and internalizing symptoms in adolescence

作者：Burghy Cory A^*; Stodola Diane E; Ruttle Paula L; Molloy Erin K; Armstrong Jeffrey M; Oler Jonathan A; Fox Michelle E; Hayes Andrea S; Kalin Ned H; Essex Marilyn J; Davidson Richard J; Birn Rasmus M

来源：Nature Neuroscience, 2012, 15(12): 1736-+.

DOI：10.1038/nn.3257

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.

• 出版日期2012-12