Threat of shock increases excitability and connectivity of the intraparietal sulcus.

ABSTRACT: Anxiety disorders affect approximately 1 in 5 (18%) Americans within a given 1 year period, placing a substantial burden on the national health care system. Therefore, there is a critical need to understand the neural mechanisms mediating anxiety symptoms. We used unbiased, multimodal, data-driven, whole-brain measures of neural activity (magnetoencephalography) and connectivity (fMRI) to identify the regions of the brain that contribute most prominently to sustained anxiety. We report that a single brain region, the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), shows both elevated neural activity and global brain connectivity during threat. The IPS plays a key role in attention orienting and may contribute to the hypervigilance that is a common symptom of pathological anxiety. Hyperactivation of this regio

SUBMITTER: Balderston NL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5478270 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature