Adolescence is an important time for brain development and mental health, but how they are connected is still not completely clear. Recent research in Imaging Neuroscience has found a link between anxiety and certain brain circuits. These circuits could be targeted with precise treatments to help improve mental health in young people.
Many mental health disorders start during adolescence, so it is important to understand how unusual brain development relates to these problems. Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital focused on anxiety, including both generalized and social anxiety disorders, which affect over 30% of teenagers in the United States.
The team looked at how brain structure and circuit organization relate to anxiety in almost 3,500 young people from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the U.S.
Led by Caterina Stamoulis from the Computational Neuroscience Laboratory at Boston Children’s, the team found a brain circuit made up of the cerebellum, amygdala, and thalamus. These three structures are important for many thinking processes and help regulate brain function. The circuit was different in young people with anxiety.
Changes in how this circuit is organized and weaker connections were linked to higher anxiety and a greater chance of related disorders. On the other hand, when other brain networks were more efficient and resilient, they helped protect against social or generalized anxiety disorders.
The researchers also found changes in brain structure in young people with anxiety. These changes were linked to having more trouble understanding and working with information about where things are and how objects and shapes relate to each other. This skill is important for daily activities like finding your way around, driving, putting furniture together, or tying your shoes.
They discovered that changes in the brain linked to anxiety could already be seen in children as young as 11 or 12. This shows why early intervention is important to help prevent long-term problems with thinking and mental health. Stamoulis believes that precision medicine could be used to create these early treatments.
“Precision psychiatry is likely to play an important role in future mental health care,” said Stamoulis. “In this study, we have identified specific circuits that are implicated in anxiety, which could become the targets of precision interventions to improve short- and longer-term mental health outcomes in youth.”