Amygdala–medial prefrontal cortex connectivity relates to stress and mental health in early childhood
Name
nsy017.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
411.92 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Park, Anne T
Leonard, Julia Anne
Saxler, Patricia Kasak
Cyr, Abigail B.
Gabrieli, John D. E.
Mackey, Allyson P
Date Issued
March 2018
Journal
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Citation
Park, Anne T. et al. "Amygdala–medial prefrontal cortex connectivity relates to stress and mental health in early childhood." Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 13, 4 (March 2018): 430–439 © 2018 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Early life stress has been associated with disrupted functional connectivity between the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), but it is unknown how early in development stress-related differences in amygdala-mPFC connectivity emerge. In a resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) analysis with 79 four- to seven-year-old children, we found a significant correlation between more adverse experiences and weaker amygdala-mPFC rs-FC. We also found that weaker amygdala-mPFC rs-FC was associated with higher levels of aggressive behavior and attention problems. These findings suggest that the impact of stress on emotional circuitry is detectable in early childhood and that this impact is associated with mental health difficulties. Connectivity in this circuit may be useful as a marker for mental health risk and for tracking the efficacy of early interventions.
MIT Department
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsy017
