Correlations Between Amygdala Activity During the Anticipation of Aversion and Trait Worry Symptoms in Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) patients exhibit heightened anticipatory amygdala activity before presentations of affective pictures (Nitschke et al., 2009). Worrying (experienced chronically in GAD) is a future-oriented thought process (Borkovec, 2002) that may similarly reflect anticipatory anxiety in GAD. GAD severity, indexed by the GAD-Q (Newman et al., 2002) might also overlap significantly with anticipatory anxiety indexed by amygdala activity during the anticipation of aversion.