Poster #13 - Adolescent Aggressive Behavior Predicts Development of Amygdala-Anterior Cingulate and Orbitofrontal Cortex Connectivity

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Integrative Statement

On a neural level, aggressive behavior has been attributed to decreased prefrontal control over amygdala activation (e.g. Volman et al., 2016). However, little is known about developmental trajectories of prefrontal-amygdala connectivity and its relation to aggression. The present study addresses this gap by examining associations between adolescent aggressive behavior and subsequent development of amygdala–anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) functional connectivity.
The sample includes 73 healthy adolescent participants with 1-4 timepoints of usable resting-state fMRI data (205 datasets total) collected in the course of a multi-wave longitudinal study. Participants were 11-to 17-years old at baseline (M = 14.61, SD = 2.05). Data waves were approximately 2 years apart.
An Aggressive behavior index was created by combining Youth Self Report Aggression and Delinquency scores (Achenbach, 2009), and Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Aggression scores (Tellegen, 1982), using Structural Equation Modeling in MPlus (RMSEA = 0.00; TLI = 1.09; CFI = 1.00).
Using the Harvard Oxford Subcortical Atlas within FSL, a bilateral amygdala mask was created including voxels with a probability of ≥ 0.90 of belonging to the left or right amygdala. Using FSL, amygdalae timeseries were extracted from the preprocessed datasets. Five ACC and OFC ROIs were created by averaging left and right seeds described by Kelly et al. (2009) for ACC and Liu et al. (2015) for OFC (see Figure 1). Voxels within a 3.5 mm sphere surrounding the coordinates were included in the masks. AFNI was used to calculate amygdala – whole brain connectivity maps, perform Fisher R to Z transformations and consequently extract amygdala – ROI connectivity values.
The lme4 package in R was used to conduct linear mixed effect analyses predicting amygdala-ROI functional connectivity from baseline age, delta age, aggressive behavior, and all two and three-way interactions, correcting for sex, average framewise displacement and scanner given an upgrade that occurred during the baseline wave (random intercept per participant). The afex package was used to compute statistical significance.
Figure 1 presents results regarding amygdala-ACC and OFC functional connectivity. For three of five ACC ROIs (dorsal, rostral, and perigenual ACC) there was an ‘age at baseline’ by ‘delta age’ by ‘aggressive behavior’ interaction effect (t(150) = -2.153, p = .033; t(150) = -2.242, p = .027; t(150) = -2.200, p = .029, respectively). For the posterior OFC ROI, a significant three-way interaction was found (t(150) = -2.921, p = .004.). For the medial OFC, a marginally significant three-way interaction emerged (t(150) = -1.924, p = .056). We therefore performed posthoc analyses for the left and right medial OFC separately. There was a three-way interaction effect only for the left medial OFC (t(150) = -2.371, p = .019). For the intermediate OFC we observed a significant ‘delta age’ by ‘aggressive behavior’ interaction (t(150) = -2.332, p = .021).
These results suggest that relatively low versus high aggression during adolescence is associated with distinct neurobiological developmental trajectories within circuits involved in emotional behavior and its regulation. Analyses examining how these trajectories relate to later antisocial behavior are underway.

Authors

• Sandra Thijssen, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  Presenting Author

• Paul Collins, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hannah Weiss, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
  Non-Presenting Author

• Monica Luciana, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author