Neuroimaging and psychophysiological investigation of the link between anxiety, enhanced affective reactivity and interoception in people with joint hypermobility.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

Anxiety is associated with increased physiological reactivity and also increased "interoceptive" sensitivity to such changes in internal bodily arousal. Joint hypermobility, an expression of a common variation in the connective tissue protein collagen, is increasingly recognized as a risk factor to anxiety and related disorders. This study explored the link between anxiety, interoceptive sensitivity and hypermobility in a sub-clinical population using neuroimaging and psychophysiological evaluation.

METHODS:

Thirty-six healthy volunteers undertook interoceptive sensitivity tests, a clinical examination for hypermobility and completed validated questionnaire measures of state anxiety and body awareness tendency. Nineteen participants also performed an emotional processing paradigm during functional neuroimaging.

RESULTS:

We confirmed a significant relationship between state anxiety score and joint hypermobility. Interoceptive sensitivity mediated the relationship between state anxiety and hypermobility. Hypermobile, compared to non-hypermobile, participants displayed heightened neural reactivity to sad and angry scenes within brain regions implicated in anxious feeling states, notably insular cortex.

CONCLUSIONS:

Our findings highlight the dependence of anxiety state on bodily context, and increase our understanding of the mechanisms through which vulnerability to anxiety disorders arises in people bearing a common variant of collagen.

• Authors: Núria Mallorquí-Bagué, Sarah N Garfinkel, Miriam Engels, Jessica A Eccles, Guillem Pailhez, Antonio Bulbena, Hugo D Critchley
• Journal: Frontiers in psychology (Front Psychol) Vol. 5 Pg. 1162 ( 2014) ISSN: 1664-1078 [Print] Switzerland
• PMID: 25352818 (Publication Type: Journal Article)