Insula shows abnormal task‐evoked and resting‐state activity in first‐episode drug‐naïve generalized anxiety disorder

作者：HuiRu Cui, Bin Zhang, Wei Li, Hui Li, Jiaoyan Pang, Qiang Hu, Lanlan Zhang, Yingying Tang, Zhi Yang, Jijun Wang, Chunbo Li, Georg Northoff · 发表于：Depression and Anxiety · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1002/da.23009 · 被引用次数：39 · 研究领域：Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments、Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Studies、Functional Brain Connectivity Studies

BACKGROUND: Interoception is associated with neural activity in the insula of healthy humans. On the basis of the somatic symptoms in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), especially abnormal heartbeat perception, we hypothesized that abnormal activity in the insula was associated with interoceptive awareness in patients with GAD. METHODS: We investigated the psychological correlates of interoceptive awareness in a sample of 34 patients with first-onset, drug-naïve GAD and 30 healthy controls (HCs). Furthermore, we compared blood oxygenation level-dependent responses between the two groups during a heartbeat perception task to assess task-evoked activity and its relationship with psychological measures. We also examined between-group differences in insular subregions resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), and its relationship with anxiety severity. RESULTS: Patients with GAD had significantly higher body perception scores than HCs. They also exhibited greater task-evoked activity in the left anterior insula, left posterior insula, and right anterior insula during interoceptive awareness than HCs. Left anterior insula activity was positively correlated with body awareness in patients with GAD, and rsFC between the left anterior insula and left medial prefrontal gyrus was negatively correlated with somatic anxiety severity. CONCLUSIONS: Investigating a sample of first-episode, drug-naïve patients, our study demonstrated abnormal interoceptive awareness in patients with GAD...