Relationship between emotional reactivity and white matter microstructure during adolescence
Date
2024
Authors
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
As adolescents age they experience dramatic shifts in affective responses to their environment, including in the magnitude and duration of emotional reactivity (ER) to stimuli. ER increases during puberty and decreases during the transition into young adulthood. Importantly, heightened ER is associated with negative clinical outcomes (e.g., pathological anxiety), making it crucial to understand the brain mechanisms supporting ER. In particular, white matter develops significantly during adolescence, and thus may be a fruitful avenue of investigation. Although white matter been linked to related constructs (e.g., anxiety), no research has yet examined the relationship between white matter development and ER among adolescents. In the present study, we collected diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) from 86 adolescents (mean age = 12.09, S.D. = 0.9; 58.14% female) and examined whether ER was related to 3 different metrics of white matter microstructure: the mean diffusivity (MD), radial diffusivity (RD), and fractional anisotropy (FA). ER did not exhibit any significant associations with any of the DWI metrics in this sample. We discuss potential explanations for the lack of observed effects, and provide suggestions for future research directions.
Description
Keywords
Diffusion, Emotional reactivity, MRI, Adolescents, Fractional anisotropy