Subcortical modulation of the salience network during negative emotional processing in mood and anxiety disorders

Abstract

Dysfunctional processing of negative emotional events is a key transdiagnostic feature of mood and anxiety disorders. This dysfunction is often associated with aberrant functioning of fronto-insular/cingulate regions involved in salience processing, including the anterior insula, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (i.e., the salience network; SN). Coordination of SN responses to negative emotional events relies on bottom-up signals from subcortical regions commonly implicated in abnormal negative emotional processing, such as the amygdala and periaqueductal gray (PAG). Here, we used dynamic causal modelling (DCM) to investigate interactions between the amyg..