Original ArticleA Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Investigation of Uncertainty in Adolescents with Anxiety Disorders
Section snippets
Participants
Eighteen adolescents with an anxiety disorder diagnosis (10 boys), ages 13–17 years (mean = 15.4; SD = 1.3), and 17 healthy adolescents (9 boys), ages 13–17 years (mean = 15.4; SD = 1.3) were scanned. Of these participants, 6 were excluded because of scanner-related imaging artifacts (2 control subjects, 1 anxious) or incomplete behavioral data (2 control subjects, 1 anxious). As a result, complete data from 16 adolescents with an anxiety disorder diagnosis (mean age = 15.2 years; SD = 1.3; 9
Behavioral Results
The ANX and control groups did not differ significantly on age, IQ, SES, and gender. Furthermore, these variables were not significantly related to behavioral variables of interest including IUS scores, task-based measures (response time, accuracy, and variability), and scores on the post-scan questionnaire.
Discussion
This is the first study to link IU in participants with anxiety disorders to the neural substrates believed to underlie these disorders. High levels of IU characteristic of clinical anxiety were associated with increased activation in frontal and limbic regions in response to uncertainty, consistent with study hypotheses. An unexpected finding was that adolescents with anxiety disorders demonstrated different patterns of neural responsiveness depending upon IU: those who endorsed low IU showed
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2021, Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental PsychiatryCitation Excerpt :This pattern of results could be interpreted as evidence that questionnaire measures of IU may capture subjective, affective reactions to uncertainty when pre-adolescent children self-report. This is consistent with the findings of Krain and colleagues (Krain et al., 2006; Krain et al., 2008) who also found that self-reported IU was associated with subjective worry and certainty but not behavioural measures such as decision making time. Parents, on the other hand, may be more likely to respond to items on the questionnaire measure of IU on the basis of observable behaviour and we may therefore expect to see more associations with behaviour when we use parent-report of IU.