PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Rany Abend
AU  - Mira A. Bajaj
AU  - Anita Harrewijn
AU  - Chika Matsumoto
AU  - Kalina J. Michalska
AU  - Elizabeth Necka
AU  - Esther E. Palacios-Barrios
AU  - Ellen Leibenluft
AU  - Lauren Y. Atlas
AU  - Daniel S. Pine
TI  - Threat-anticipatory psychophysiological response is enhanced in youth with anxiety disorders and correlates with prefrontal cortex neuroanatomy
AID  - 10.1503/jpn.200110
DP  - 2021 Mar 01
TA  - Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience
PG  - E212--E221
VI  - 46
IP  - 2
4099  - http://jpn.ca/content/46/2/E212.short
4100  - http://jpn.ca/content/46/2/E212.full
SO  - JPN2021 Mar 01; 46
AB  - Background Threat anticipation engages neural circuitry that has evolved to promote defensive behaviours; perturbations in this circuitry could generate excessive threat-anticipation response, a key characteristic of pathological anxiety. Research into such mechanisms in youth faces ethical and practical limitations. Here, we use thermal stimulation to elicit pain-anticipatory psychophysiological response and map its correlates to brain structure among youth with anxiety and healthy youth.Methods Youth with anxiety (n = 25) and healthy youth (n = 25) completed an instructed threat-anticipation task in which cues predicted nonpainful or painful thermal stimulation; we indexed psychophysiological response during the anticipation and experience of pain using skin conductance response. High-resolution brain-structure imaging data collected in another visit were available for 41 participants. Analyses tested whether the 2 groups differed in their psychophysiological cue-based pain-anticipatory and pain-experience responses. Analyses then mapped psychophysiological response magnitude to brain structure.Results Youth with anxiety showed enhanced psychophysiological response specifically during anticipation of painful stimulation (b = 0.52, p = 0.003). Across the sample, the magnitude of psychophysiological anticipatory response correlated negatively with the thickness of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (pFWE < 0.05); psychophysiological response to the thermal stimulation correlated positively with the thickness of the posterior insula (pFWE < 0.05).Limitations Limitations included the modest sample size and the cross-sectional design.Conclusion These findings show that threat-anticipatory psychophysiological response differentiates youth with anxiety from healthy youth, and they link brain structure to psychophysiological response during pain anticipation and experience. A focus on threat anticipation in research on anxiety could delineate relevant neural circuitry.