Figure 2. Examples of two recent functional neuroimaging studies bridging neural mechanisms and etiological factors in motor functional neurological disorder (mFND).

Based on the findings of Diez et al., Panel A shows connectograms and scatterplots illustrating that resting-state functional connectivity strength between emotion processing brain areas (amygdala, insula) and primary motor cortex (precentral gyrus) positively correlated with the magnitude of previously experienced childhood physical abuse in patients with mixed mFND.³⁰ Note: findings are bilateral but for ease of viewing only left hemisphere findings are displayed. Similar childhood physical abuse – functional brain architecture relationships were not observed in psychiatric controls. Based on the findings of Spagnolo et al., Panel B shows that childhood abuse burden correlated with functional movement disorder symptom severity only in the subset of patients carrying the G-703T polymorphism (rs4570625) in the tryptophan hydroxylase-2 (TPH2) gene; Panel C illustrates that T carriers with mFND exhibited reduced right amygdala-middle frontal gyrus resting-state functional connectivity compared to GG homozygotes with mFND and healthy controls.³¹