Journal: Neurobiology of Stress

Article Title: Pre-COVID brain network topology prospectively predicts social anxiety alterations during the COVID-19 pandemic

doi: 10.1016/j.ynstr.2023.100578

Figure Lengend Snippet: Workflow of the study. (A) Timeline of data acquisition. Before the COVID-19 pandemic (T1: October 2019 to January 2020), participants underwent brain MRI scanning and completed baseline behavioral measures. During the most severe pandemic period (T2: February 2020 to April 2020), participants were re-contacted for follow-up behavioral testing. 110 subjects were identified as eligible for the study. (B) Construction of 264 × 264 functional connectivity matrix for each subject. (C) Topological graph theory and statistical analyses. We computed both global and nodal metrics for each individual to describe the characteristics of each weighted network, and for each network metric we used the AUC over a range of network sparsity thresholds (0.02: 0.01: 0.33) in subsequent statistical analyses. We used partial correlation to investigate the association between each global metric and SA alterations (T2-T1), and PLSC to determine the degree centrality pattern of nodes linked to SA alterations. Abbreviations: AUC, area under the curve; COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019; LSAS, Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; PLSC, partial least squares correlation; SA, social anxiety; SRLEC, Self-Rating Life Events Checklist; SSS, Socioeconomic Status Scale; SVD, singular value decomposition; TAI, Trait Anxiety Inventory; C p , clustering coefficient; E glob , global efficiency; E loc , local efficiency; L p , shortest path length; γ , normalized clustering coefficient; λ , normalized shortest path length; σ , small-worldness.

Article Snippet: To evaluate multivariate patterns of correlation between the nodal-level topological property (degree centrality) and SA alterations across subjects, we used PLSC via the publicly available PLS toolbox ( https://www.rotman-baycrest.on.ca/index.php?section=84 ) in MATLAB R2018b (MathWorks, Natick, USA).

Techniques: Functional Assay, Magnetic Resonance Imaging