Social anxiety links of amygdala switch cross puberty

Socioemotional functions have been linked to the amygdala through molecular mechanisms observed in animals. However, these links remain largely unestablished in the development of the human amygdala during puberty. By precisely tracing the amygdala with longitudinal data spanning childhood and adolescence, our aim is to capture the dynamic relationship between social anxiety and amygdala geometry. Around the onset of puberty (10-11.5 years), we detected shifting associations between amygdala volume and social anxiety. Higher social anxiety is associated with a larger amygdala in mid-childhood but a smaller amygdala in early adolescence. Further geometry analysis revealed regional deformations that underpinned the shift. Our findings reconcile inconsistent results from previous studies and respect the intrinsic dimension of development in resolving amygdala-anxiety links during puberty.