Anxious Children Have Larger 'Fear Centers' in Their Brains: Anxiety Disorder Development

Do you have an anxious child? Then their brain may just be a bit different than an average child's. Scientists have found that alterations in the development of the "fear center" in the brain during childhood may have an important influence on the development of anxiety problems.

In this case, the researchers examined 76 children between the ages of seven to 9. At this age, anxiety-related traits and symptoms can be reliably identified. The parents of these children completed assessments that were designed to measure anxiety levels in the children. In addition, the researchers used non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to look at the children's brain structure and function.

So what did they find? It turns out that children with high levels of anxiety actually had enlarged amygdala volume, the part of the brain associated with fear. They also found that the children that increased connectivity with other brain regions responsible for attention, emotion perception and regulation, compared to children with low levels of anxiety. In fact, the scientists were able to create an equation that reliably predicted the children's anxiety level from the MRI measurements of amygdala volume and amygdala function connectivity.

"It is a bit surprising that alterations to the structure and connectivity of the amygdala were so significant in children with higher levels of anxiety, given both the young age of the children and the fact that their anxiety levels were too low to be observed clinically," said Shaozheng Qin, one of the researchers, in a news release. "However, our study represents an important step in characterizing altered brain systems and developing predictive biomarkers in the identification for young children at risk for anxiety disorders."

The findings could help researchers better understand the influence of childhood anxiety on specific amygdala circuits. This, in turn, could allow scientists to better understand the origins of anxiety in adults.

The findings are published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.