Anticipated Threat fMRI Stress Task Reveals Dysfunctional Ventral Anterior Cingulate Activation Associated With Psychosis and Depression Symptom Burden

Abstract

Stress and abnormal stress response are associated with many psychiatric illnesses including schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD), but the brain mechanisms linking stress to psychiatric disorders remain unclear. We used a stress-based functional neuroimaging task, reverse-translated from preclinical studies of stress, to test the hypothesis that abnormal limbic processing of stressful threat anticipation is associated with psychosis and affective symptoms in patients with SSD.