title: Significant grey matter changes in a region of the orbitofrontal cortex in healthy participants predicts emotional dysregulation.
abstract: The traditional concept of 'categorical' psychiatric disorders has been challenged as many of the symptoms display a continuous distribution in the general population. We suggest that this is the case for emotional dysregulation, a key component in several categorical psychiatric disorder constructs. We used voxel-based magnetic resonance imaging morphometry in healthy human subjects (n = 87) to study how self-reported subclinical symptoms associated with emotional dysregulation relate to brain regions assumed to be critical for emotion regulation. To measure a pure emotional dysregulation, we also corrected for subclinical symptoms of non-emotional attentional dysregulation. We show that such subclinical emotional symptoms correlate negatively with the grey matter volume of lateral orbitofrontal cortex bilaterally-a region assumed to be critical for emotion regulation and dysfunctional in psychiatric disorders involving emotional dysregulation. Importantly, this effect is mediated both by a decrease in volume associated with emotional dysregulation and an increase in volume due to non-emotional attentional dysregulation. Exploratory analysis suggests that other regions involved in emotional processing such as insula and ventral striatum also show a similar reduction in grey matter volume mirroring clinical disorders associated with emotional dysregulation. Our findings support the concept of continuous properties in psychiatric symptomatology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden predrag.petrovic@ki.se.
authors.forename: Predrag
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Petrovic
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Carl Johan
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Ekman
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Johanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Klahr
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tigerström
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Göran
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rydén
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Anette G M
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Johansson
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Carl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sellgren
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Armita
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Golkar
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Olsson
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Arne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Öhman
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ingvar
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Mikael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Landén
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000473:pathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D066128:Gray Matter / Q000473:pathology*; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000473:pathology*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D066328:Ventral Striatum / Q000473:pathology
keywords: emotional dysregulation; orbitofrontal cortex; structural MRI; voxel-based morphometry