A Neural Biomarker of Psychological Vulnerability to Future Life Stress
Open accessAbstract
We all experience a host of common life stressors such as the death of a family member, medical illness, and financial uncertainty. While most of us are resilient to such stressors, continuing to function normally, for a subset of individuals, experiencing these stressors increases the likelihood of developing treatment-resistant, chronic psychological problems, including depression and anxiety. It is thus paramount to identify predictive markers of risk, particularly those reflecting fundamental biological processes that can be targets for intervention and prevention. Using data from a longitudinal study of 340 healthy young adults, we demonstrate that individual differences in threat-related amygdala reactivity predict psychological vulnerability to life stress occurring as much as 1 to 4 years later. These results highlight a readily assayed biomarker, threat-related amygdala reactivity, which predicts psychological vulnerability to commonly experienced stressors and represents a discrete target for intervention and prevention.
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Stronger amygdala reactivity to threat may lead to stronger emotional reactivity.
“Greater amygdala reactivity to threat may result in greater emotional reactivity, or the tendency to experience frequent and intense emotional arousal and responses to environmental events90”
From Early life adversity and health-risk behaviors: Proposed psychological and neural mechanisms (2018) · cites this paper as [90]
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- Authors
- Swartz, J. R., Knodt, A. R., Radtke, S. R., & Hariri, A. R.
- Affiliations
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- Duke University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Swartz, Johnna R.
- Venue
- Neuron
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-02
- Volume
- 85
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 505-511
- ISSN
- 0896-6273 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4319095
- OpenAlex
- W2037462540
- Cited by
- 216
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 25 · 2015: 14
- FWCI
- 13.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Neuron (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) (submittedVersion)
- DukeSpace (Duke University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- UNC Libraries
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA033369, P30DA023026, DA031579, DA033369, R01DA031579)
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32-HD07376)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32-HD07376, T32HD007376)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Keywords
- psychological vulnerability, life events, neural markers, depression, anxiety, risk prediction, individual differences, young adults, stress resilience, prevention
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Amygdala, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Forecasting, Humans, Life Change Events, Longitudinal Studies, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Photic Stimulation, Risk Factors, Stress, Psychological, Biomarkers, Young Adult
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