Amygdala connectivity as a predisposing neural feature of stress-induced behaviour during the COVID-2019 outbreak in Hubei

  1. Yuan Zhou
  2. Yuwen He
  3. Yuening Jin
  4. Bei Rong
  5. Peter Zeidman
  6. Huan Huang
  7. Yuan Feng
  8. Jian Cui
  9. Shudong Zhang
  10. Yun Wang
  11. Gang Wang
  12. Yutao Xiang
  13. Huiling Wang

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Abstract

The amygdala plays an important role in the regulation of stress and anxiety. However, little is known about the relationship between amygdala connectivity and subsequent stress-induced behavior. The current study investigated whether amygdala connectivity measured before experiencing stress is a predisposing neural feature of subsequent stress-induced behavior while individuals face an emergent and unexpected event like the COVID-19 outbreak. Using an fMRI cohort established before the pandemic in Wuhan, Hubei, we found that resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the right amygdala with the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) was negatively correlated with the stress-induced behavior of these volunteers during the COVID-2019 outbreak in Hubei. Furthermore, the self-connection of the right amygdala, inferred using dynamic causal modeling, was negatively correlated with stress-induced behavior in this cohort. A significant correlation between the right amygdala-dmPFC rsFC and self-connection of the right amygdala was found. Additionally, after three months of the COVID-19 outbreak in Hubei when the stressor weakened - and in another cohort collected in regions outside Hubei where the individuals experienced a lower level of stress - the relationship between the amygdala-dmPFC rsFC and the stress-induced behavior disappeared. Our findings support that amygdala connectivity is a predisposing neural feature of stress-induced behavior in the COVID-19 outbreak in Hubei, suggesting the amygdala connectivity before stress predicts subsequent behavior while facing an emergent and unexpected event. And thus our findings provide an avenue for identifying individuals vulnerable to stress using intrinsic brain function before stress as an indicator.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.26.21261160: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, and the Institutional Review Board of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
    Consent: All of the subjects gave informed consent online.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    2.3.2 Preprocessing: All imaging data preprocessing procedures were carried out with Data Processing Assistant for Resting-state fMRI version 4.3 (http://www.restfmri.net), which is based on Statistical Parametric Mapping 12 (http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm).
    http://www.restfmri.net
    suggested: (REST: a toolkit for resting-state fMRI, RRID:SCR_009641)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Several limitations should be mentioned. First, the sample size in this study is small because the volunteers were recruited from established cohorts. For the same reason, this study is a quasi-experiment condition and thus we cannot find an appropriate control group to conduct formal statistics to test whether the brain-behavior relationship established in the group with higher stress level (i.e., Hubei Cohort) is statistically stronger than that with lower stress level. An ideal control group could be the individuals who took part in the scanning before the pandemic in the same site as the Hubei Cohort but they or their families were not living in Hubei province half a year before the COVID-19 outbreak in Hubei and thus they were presumed free of the pandemic influence or had lower stress level (there were only 5 cases in the current study). Future studies may use established (e.g., HCP or UK Biobank) or new cohorts with large sample size and diversified sample pool to validate the current findings. Second, this study suggests the role of amygdala connectivity in predicting stress behaviors in a non-clinical population. However, whether the current findings can be generalized to patients with stress-related psychiatric disorders or other vulnerable populations to stress needs to be explored. Furthermore, the physiological mechanism behind this prediction role of amygdala connectivity needs to be explored in future studies by using comprehensive computational model or animal...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.26.21261160v1 on medRxiv