Anxiety is a future-oriented unpleasant and multiple-dimension mental state induced by distant and potential threats, which can be subdivided into momentary state anxiety and stable trait anxiety. It is one of the most common mental state and plays a complex and combined role in our mental and physical health. However, no studies have systematically investigated whether these two different dimensions of anxiety share a common or distinct topological mechanisms of human brain network. In the study, we used macro-scale human brain morphological similarity network and functional connectivity network and their spatial and temporal variations as well as the structure-function correspondence of to explore the topological mechanisms of state and trait anxiety.
We collected 60 participants' structural and functional MRI image, and used state-trait anxiety inventory to evaluate participants' levels of anxiety. In study 1，we constructed single-subject morphological similarity network by assessing the distribution similarity of each morphological measurement (including cortical area, volume and thickness) for each pair of brain regions as well as functional connectivity network by computing the Pearson correlation coefficient of time series on each pair of brain regions, then we used the sliding window approach to calculate the temporal variations of functional network and changed the bin number of the frequency distribution histogram for each brain region to calculate the spatial variations of morphological similarity network. In study 2, we deployed a general regression model to explore the correlation between different morphological similarity network and functional connectivity network from the perspective of topological measurements, and correlated the correspondence with different dimensions of anxiety.
In study 1，our results showed that (1) in the static functional network, state and trait anxiety were both positively correlated with pagerank centrality in the right insula (RH-SalVentAttn FrOper), but there were no significant results in morphological similarity network; (2) in the temporal variations of functional network, state and trait anxiety were both positively correlated with median and mode of pagerank and degree centrality in the right insular (3) in the spatial variations of morphological similarity network, state and trait anxiety were both negatively correlated with CV of nodal efficiency in the left frontal eyes field of volume similarity network. In study 2, our results showed that (1) there were significant correlations between topological measurements of morphological similarity network and functional connectivity network and compared to volume similarity network, thickness and area similarity network show stronger structure-function correlations; (2) Based on individual variability, the LH_ Vis (the visual network) exhibited significant thickness一function associations in terms of eigenvector centrality, the connection between the LH_ Default_ PFC (the prefrontal cortex) and the LH-SalVentAttn ParOper (the supramarginal gyros) exhibited significant correlation between area similarity network and functional network; (3) Trait anxiety was significantly positively correlated with human brain structure-function correspondence.
In summary, we found the importance of the insula and the frontal eyes field in the network topological mechanisms of anxiety and demonstrated that state and trait anxiety shared common human brain network topological mechanisms, the results had high spatiotemporal robustness. Our study also concluded that the positive correlation between structural and functional network in terms of topology as well as the vital role of the visual network, the prefrontal cortex and the supramarginal gyros in structure-function network correspondence, and finally concluded that human brain structure-function topological correlation underlying individual differences in trait anxiety. Study 1 and 2 explored the network topological mechanisms of state and trait anxiety from the perspective of morphological similarity network and functional network and their spatial and temporal variations as well as the correspondence between morphological similarity network and functional network, which enriched the topological mechanism of anxiety and provided theoretical basis for whether state and trait anxiety shared common topological mechanism.
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