Illness Severity Moderated Association Between Trait Anxiety and Amygdala-Based Functional Connectivity in Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Abstract

Trait anxiety is considered a vulnerability factor for the development of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The amygdala is related to both trait anxiety and GAD. Thus, we investigated amygdala-based functional connectivity (FC) in drug-naive non-comorbid GAD patients and explored its associations with personality, symptoms, and illness severity. FC analyses using the bilateral amygdala as seeds were performed with resting-state functional MRI data from 38 GAD patients and 20 matched healthy controls (HCs). Clinical characteristics were correlated with FC Z-scores from regions showing significant group differences. Furthermore, moderation analyses were used to explore the conditional effect of illness severity measured by the Clinical Global Impression–Severity (CGI-S) scale on the relationship between FC and trait anxiety. Relative to HCs, GAD patients showed hypoconnectivity between the amygdala and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), parahippocampal gyrus, and cerebellum and hyperconnectivity between the amygdala and the superior temporal gyrus (STG), insula, and postcentral gyrus. In GAD patients, amygdala–rACC connectivity was negatively associated with symptom severity and trait anxiety, and amygdala–IFG connectivity was positively associated with symptom severity. Moreover, CGI-S scores moderated the negative correlation between trait anxiety and amygdala–rACC FC. We demonstrate that there is extensive amygdala-based network dysfunction in patients with GAD. More importantly, amygdala–rACC connectivity plays a key role in the neural pathology of trait anxiety. Finally, the more severe the illness, the stronger the negative association between trait anxiety and amygdala–rACC FC. Our results emphasize the importance of personalized intervention in GAD.