Background

The pervasiveness of subclinical anxiety in children, highlights the need to identify its neurobiological underpinnings to better inform interventions. Given the now well-established link between aberrant emotion processing and anxiety disorders and yet limited neurobiologically-informed research in this area, this study examined the neural correlates of emotion recognition (ER) in children with sub-clinical anxiety.

Method

Ninety children (aged 9–11 years) with sub-clinical anxiety, completed an emotion recognition task whilst undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. The ER task required participants to match shapes and match emotional faces in the context of shape distractors. Participants also completed the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS).

Results

Greater blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) changes associated with ER were observed in the lateral occipital cortex, middle frontal gyrus, superior middle frontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, superior parietal lobule, inferior parietal lobule, superior temporal gyrus, and middle temporal gyrus symmetrically. The clusters also included posterior cingulate cortex, insula, hippocampus, amygdala and cerebellum during matching emotions than those matching shapes. Females showed greater BOLD changes associated with ER than males in the right middle frontal gyrus. The BOLD changes associated with ER in the right middle frontal gyrus and right insula were greater in children with SCAS subscale (physical injury fear) scores in the normal range than those with elevated scores.

Discussion

The findings in this study implicate the right middle frontal gyrus and insula as key regions in the neurobiological underpinnings of sub-clinical anxiety as they relate to attention impairments in anxious children.

Conclusion

The results of this study indicate there are gender differences in young participants during emotion processing and provides a neurobiological target for attention impairments in anxious children.

中文翻译：

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阐明亚临床焦虑儿童情绪识别的神经相关性

背景

儿童亚临床焦虑的普遍性凸显了确定其神经生物学基础以更好地指导干预的必要性。鉴于异常情绪处理和焦虑症之间现已确立的联系，但该领域的神经生物学研究有限，本研究检查了亚临床焦虑症儿童情绪识别 (ER) 的神经相关性。

方法

90 名患有亚临床焦虑症的儿童（9-11 岁）在接受功能性磁共振成像的同时完成了一项情绪识别任务。ER 任务要求参与者在形状干扰项的背景下匹配形状并匹配情绪面孔。参与者还完成了 Spence 儿童焦虑量表 (SCAS)。

结果

在枕外侧皮层、额中回、额中回、额下回、顶上小叶、顶下小叶、颞上回和颞中回对称性地观察到与ER相关的更大的血氧水平依赖性（BOLD）变化. 这些簇还包括在匹配情绪时的后扣带皮层、岛叶、海马、杏仁核和小脑，而不是那些匹配形状。与右侧额中回的男性相比，女性显示出与 ER 相关的更大的 BOLD 变化。SCAS 分量表（身体伤害恐惧）评分在正常范围内的儿童与评分较高的儿童相比，与右侧额中回和右侧脑岛 ER 相关的 BOLD 变化更大。

讨论

本研究的结果表明，右侧额中回和岛叶是亚临床焦虑神经生物学基础的关键区域，因为它们与焦虑儿童的注意力障碍有关。

结论

这项研究的结果表明，年轻参与者在情绪处理过程中存在性别差异，并为焦虑儿童的注意力障碍提供了神经生物学目标。