Abstract
Anxiety negatively affects quality of life and psychosocial functioning. Previous research has shown that anxiety symptoms in healthy individuals are associated with variations in the volume of brain regions, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. Brain lesion data also suggests the hemisphere damaged may affect levels of anxiety. We studied a sample of 182 male Vietnam War veterans with penetrating brain injuries, using a semi-automated voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) approach. VLSM reveals significant associations between a symptom such as anxiety and the location of brain lesions, and does not require a broad, subjective assignment of patients into categories based on lesion location. We found that lesioned brain regions in cortical and limbic areas of the left hemisphere, including middle, inferior and superior temporal lobe, hippocampus, and fusiform regions, along with smaller areas in the inferior occipital lobe, parahippocampus, amygdala, and insula, were associated with increased anxiety symptoms as measured by the Neurobehavioral Rating Scale (NRS). These results were corroborated by similar findings using Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) anxiety scores, which supports these regions' role in regulating anxiety.In summary, using a semi-automated analysis tool, we detected an effect of focal brain damage on the presentation of anxiety. We also separated the effects of brain injury and war experience by including a control group of combat veterans without brain injury. We compared this control group against veterans with brain lesions in areas associated with anxiety, and against veterans with lesions only in other brainareas.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 686-694 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Neuropsychologia |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 1 2013 |
Funding
We especially thank the Vietnam War veterans who participated in this study. We thank the National Naval Medical Center for their support and provision of their facilities and S. Bonifant, B. Cheon, C. Ngo, A. Greathouse, K. Reding, and G. Tasick for their invaluable help with the testing of participants and organization of this study. The work was supported by the United States National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, intramural research program, and a project grant from the United States Army Medical Research and Material Command administrated by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation (Vietnam Head Injury Study Phase III: a 30-year post-injury follow-up study, Grant DAMD17-01-1-0675). The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, nor the United States Government.
Keywords
- Anxiety
- Traumatic brain injury
- Voxel-based lesion symptom mapping
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Behavioral Neuroscience