A functional anatomical shift from the lateral frontal pole to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in emotion action control underpins elevated levels of anxiety: partial replication and generalization of Bramson et al., 2023

Abstract

Flexible control over emotional behavior represents a promising target for novel interventions for mental disorders. Accumulating evidence has indicated a key role of the lateral frontal pole (FPl) and its connections with other cortical and subcortical systems in emotional action regulation. A recent study from Bramson et al., (2023) employed a multi-modal neuroimaging approach to demonstrate a functional-anatomical shift from FPI to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in a sample of anxious individuals during emotional action control. While these findings might represent a venue for interventions in anxiety disorders, conventional neuroimaging strategies are often limited with respect to generalizability and reproducibility. Against this background we capitalized previous large-scale fMRI data in n = 250 participants using an affective linguistic Go/NoGo paradigm to examine the robustness of the reported associations with trait social anxiety across samples, cultures and paradigms. Additionally, context-dependent functional connectivity patterns were explored to examine action control in different emotional contexts. In line with previous study, we found no difference between high- and non-anxious group on the behavioral congruency-effect. The neural results showed that non-social anxious group engaged the left FPl while the high-social anxious group specifically recruited the DLPFC, however in the absence of significant between-group differences. Importantly, the level of trait social anxiety was significantly positively related with DLPFC activity and negatively with left FPl activation across groups. Furthermore, context-dependent functional connectivity analyses revealed a negative context-specific neural shift from the sgACC-FPl to sgACC-DLPFC specifically in the high anxiety group. Together, the present study employed a different task paradigm, population and analytic methods, partially replicated the findings described by Bramson et al., (2023) and additionally determined context-specific changes in the communication with the sgACC in high anxiety. The findings provide further evidence for target-based interventions of persistent emotional control deficits in anxiety disorders.