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. 2018 Oct 17;38(42):8943–8955. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0347-18.2018

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Anatomical framework of autonomic functioning and relevant ROIs. A, Building on previous studies, we developed a lateralized schematic of PANS and SANS functioning. The salience network is anchored by hubs in anterior insula (AI) and ACC and has tight connections with central pattern generators, including the amygdala, hypothalamus, and PAG. Although this framework does not include many brainstem regions that are also integral for ANS activity (e.g., nucleus of the solitary tract, parabrachial nucleus, nucleus ambiguus, dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus, and rostral ventrolateral medulla, among others), it does include critical cortical and subcortical regions that can be measured with neuroimaging techniques. Thus, this represents a simplified yet testable conceptualization of the neural system that supports resting physiological activity as well as phasic emotional reactions. B, We extracted the BOLD time series from 21 ROIs that pertained to our neuroanatomical model of ANS functioning. Connectivity strength between each node-pair (or edge) was calculated by correlating the BOLD time series of each ROI with the BOLD time series of every other ROI, which provided us with a matrix of 210 edges to correlate with measures of baseline RSA and SCL. The ROIs were functionally connected to the insula and were obtained from task-free fMRI data in an independent cohort of healthy older controls. These ROIs (with the numerical labels that we assigned to them denoted in parentheses) included the following: left dorsal AI (1), right dorsal AI (11), left ventral AI node 1 (2), right ventral AI node 1 (12), left ventral AI node 2 (3), right ventral AI node 2 (13), left anterior midcingulate cortex (4), right anterior midcingulate cortex (14), left pregenual ACC node 1 (5), right pregenual ACC node 1 (15), left pregenual ACC node 2 (6), right pregenual ACC node 2 (16), left subgenual ACC (7), right subgenual ACC (17), left amygdala (8), right amygdala (18), left hypothalamus (9), right hypothalamus (19), left thalamus (10), right thalamus (20), and PAG (21). Amy, Amygdala; Hyp, hypothalamus; Thal, thalamus.