Differential limbic-cortical correlates of sadness and anxiety in healthy subjects: Implications for affective disorders

Background: Affective disorders are associated with comorbidity of depressi on and anxiety symptoms, Positron emission tomography resting-state studies in affective disorders have generally failed to isolate specific symptom e ffects, Emotion provocation studies in healthy volunteers have produced var iable results, due to differences in experimental paradigm and instructions . Methods: To better delineate the neural correlates of sad mood and anxiety, this study used autobiographical memory scripts in eight healthy women to generate sadness, anxiety, or a neutral relaxed state in a within-subject d esign, Results: Sadness and anxiety, when contrasted to a neutral emotional state, engaged a set of distinct pam-limbic-cortical regions, with a limited numb er of common effects. Sadness,vas accompanied by specific activations of th e subgenual cingulate area (BA) 25 and dorsal insula, specific deactivation of the right prefrontal cortex BA 9, and more prominent deactivation of th e posterior parietal cortex BAs 40/7. Anxiety was associated with specific activations of the ventral insula, the orbitofrontal and anterior temporal cortices, specific deactivation of parahippocampal gyri, and more prominent deactivation of the inferior temporal cortex BAs 20/37, Conclusions: These findings are interpreted within a model in which sadness and anxiety are represented by segregated corticolimbic pathways, where a major role is played by selective dorsal cortical deactivations during sadn ess, and ventral cortical deactivations in anxiety, (C) 2000 Society of Bio logical Psychiatry.