Functional connectivity mediating passive coping style and perceived stress in predicting anxiety

Background: Passive coping style (CS) and perceived stress play significant roles as influencing factors in the development of anxiety. However, the underlying neurobiological mechanism linking passive CS and perceived stress to anxiety susceptibility remains elusive. Thus, we aimed to investigate the relationships among passive CS, brain functional connectivity, perceived stress, and anxiety in young adults.

Methods: Data from the longitudinal Gene-Brain-Behavior Project(GBB) and Southwest University Longitudinal Imaging Multimodal Project(SLIM) were used. We confirmed the relationship among anxiety, passive CS and perceived stress. Then, we investigated the mediated functional connectivity between passive CS and perceived stress, and used these functional connections to predict present anxiety and follow-up anxiety one year later.

Results: Anxiety scores were significantly positively correlated with passive CS and perceived stress. At the brain network level, connections within the default mode network (DMN) and between the somatomotor network (SMN) and subcortical network (SUN) mediated the relationship between passive CS and perceived stress. Furthermore, present anxiety and follow-up anxiety one year later could be predicted by these mediated functional connections. Nodes with greater predictive contribution were mainly located in the left anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC), left inferior parietal gyrus (IPG), right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), and left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), mainly distributed on the DMN.

Conclusion: These findings demonstrated that the mediated neurobiological mechanisms between passive CS and perceived stress could be used to predict present and future anxiety, which enhance understanding of the neurobiological basis of anxiety susceptibility in this passive CS and perceived stress and may have implications for early preventing and intervening mental disorders.