Key result
In healthy adults aged 19 to 55, age was positively correlated with amygdala resting-state functional connectivity to the cerebellum and negatively correlated with connectivity to the dmPFC.
Why the study?
Does resting-state functional connectivity of the amygdala change with age from young to middle adulthood?
Cross-Sectional (n=132)
Does resting-state functional connectivity of the amygdala change with age from young to middle adulthood?
p-value: p=<0.001
Intrinsic connectivity of the amygdala evolves from young to middle adulthood in selective brain regions, which may inform future studies of emotion regulation.
Age-related amygdala rsFC changes may inform adult emotion regulation; leaves open causal and clinical validation.
Functional connectivities of the amygdala support emotional and cognitive processing. Life-span development of resting-state functional connectivities (rsFC) of the amygdala may underlie age-related differences in emotion regulatory mechanisms. To date, age-related changes in amygdala rsFC have been reported through adolescence but not as thoroughly for adulthood. This study investigated age-related differences in amygdala rsFC in 132 young and middle-aged adults (19 to 55 years). Data processing followed published routines. Overall, amygdala showed positive rsFC with the temporal, sensorimotor and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, insula and lentiform nucleus, and negative rsFC with visual, frontoparietal, and posterior cingulate cortex and caudate head. Amygdala rsFC with the cerebellum was positively correlated with age, and rsFCs with the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and somatomotor cortex were negatively correlated with age, at voxel p<0.001 in combination with cluster p<0.05 FWE. These age-dependent changes in connectivity appeared to manifest to a greater extent in men than in women, although the sex difference was only evident for the cerebellum in a slope test of age regressions (p = 0.0053). Previous studies showed amygdala interaction with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) during emotion regulation. In region of interest analysis, amygdala rsFC with the ACC and vmPFC did not show age-related changes. These findings suggest that intrinsic connectivity of the amygdala evolved from young to middle adulthood in selective brain regions, and may inform future studies of age-related emotion regulation and maladaptive development of the amygdala circuits as an etiological marker of emotional disorders.
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Xiao et al. (2018) conducted a cross-sectional in Healthy adults (n=132). Age was evaluated on Correlation between age and amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (p=<0.001). In healthy adults aged 19 to 55, age was positively correlated with amygdala resting-state functional connectivity to the cerebellum and negatively correlated with connectivity to the dmPFC.
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