(PS9-D77) Anxiety Trajectories During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Young Adults: Examining Pre-covid Neural Associations Using Fmri

The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with widespread, but not universal, increases in levels of stress and anxiety among young adults (Cost et al., 2021; Shanahan et al., 2020). Given that responses to stressful life events vary, it is important to understand how pre-pandemic neurocognitive factors may influence reactivity to stress and susceptibility to anxiety. The present study examines associations between pre-pandemic brain activation patterns during threat and cognitive control processing and anxiety trajectories during the pandemic.
Participants were recruited as part of an ongoing longitudinal study of temperament and socioemotional development (N = 291), the analytic plan was preregistered (https://osf.io/bmzda). N=162 completed at least one of three repeated assessments of generalized anxiety symptoms in young adulthood (~18 years) during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in April through July 2020. 48 participants completed either a cognitive control or threat processing fMRI task in adolescence (~15 years). A latent growth curve model was applied to assess participants’ anxiety trajectories across three months (Morales et al., 2022). The latent intercept and slope factor were extracted per participant indexing anxiety at the first assessment and of anxiety trajectory across repeated assessments. Multivariate whole-brain models tested whether activation patterns during the threat processing and cognitive control tasks associated with the latent intercept and slope factor. Results were thresholded at voxelwise p=.005, whole-brain cluster corrected to p< 0.05 (k=62).
Average anxiety trajectories were characterized by an initial peak during the first anxiety assessment followed by a decreasing slope in the following months. Increased activation to conflict, but not threat, associated with greater anxiety in the first assessment and greater decreases in the follow-up assessments. These patterns were apparent in a number of regions including the anterior cingulate cortex.
Our preliminary findings suggest an association between adolescent neurocognitive profiles and early adulthood anxiety symptoms during a uniquely stressful event.