Functional connectivity of the human amygdala using resting state fMRI
Section snippets
Participants
Sixty-five right-handed (as assessed by the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory; Oldfield, 1971) native English-speaking participants with no history of psychiatric or neurological illness (confirmed by psychiatric clinical assessment) were enrolled (33 males; mean age: 29.3 ± 7.9 years). The study was approved by the NYU School of Medicine and New York University institutional review boards. Signed informed consent was obtained prior to participation.
Data acquisition and image preprocessing
Resting state data were acquired on a Siemens
Total amygdala
Spontaneous activity in the amygdala positively predicted spontaneous activity in medial prefrontal regions including medial frontal gyrus (BA 10) and rostral ACC (BA 32), as well as a small region of dorsal ACC (BA 24). Other regions positively predicted by amygdala activity included insula, thalamus, and striatum. Conversely, amygdala activity negatively predicted activity in dorsal and posterior regions such as superior frontal gyrus (BA 6/8), bilateral middle frontal gyrus, posterior
Discussion
By mapping temporally correlated patterns of low frequency spontaneous activity during rest, we detected distinct functional networks associated with three amygdala subdivisions. These results demonstrate the potential of resting state fMRI to make fine-tuned distinctions within amygdala circuits in vivo, and as such, contribute to the growing literature supporting translational models of amygdala function.
Analyses of the amygdala as a single region revealed patterns of functional connectivity
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank David Stark and Katie Hiler for their assistance with supplementary materials and are grateful to those individuals who volunteered their time to participate in this study. This work was supported in part by NIMH (K23 MH074821).
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