Socioeconomic and cognitive roots of trait anxiety in young adults

Abstract

In 54 participants (41% women) from the Czech arm of the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood, a national birth cohort with prospectively collected data from their birth until young adulthood, we aimed to study the association between early-life socioeconomic deprivation, cognitive ability in adolescence, trait anxiety and resting state functional connectivity of the lateral prefrontal cortex in young adulthood. We found that early-life socioeconomic deprivation was associated with lower cognitive ability in adolescence (at age 13) as well as higher trait anxiety in young adulthood (at age 23/24). Higher cognitive ability in adolescence predicted lower trait anxiety in young adulthood. Resting state functional connectivity between the right lateral prefrontal cortex and a cluster of voxels including left precentral gyrus, left postcentral gyrus and superior frontal gyrus mediated the relationship between lower cognitive ability in adolescence and higher trait anxiety in young adulthood. These findings indicate that lower cognitive ability and higher trait anxiety may be both consequences of socioeconomic deprivation in early life. The recruitment of the right lateral prefrontal cortex may be the underlying mechanism, through which higher cognitive ability may ameliorate trait anxiety.

Associations between socioeconomic status, response inhibition, and state and trait anxiety in Chinese adolescents

“…Notably, in these studies speci c features of family background, such as poverty status and deprivation of food, clothes, etc. [22,54], were found to be signi cantly related to trait anxiety, while controlling for the type of SES variables that we used as predictor of trait anxiety in our study. This suggests independent negative associations between trait anxiety and multiple aspects related to SES, not only for those related to (very) basic resources.…”

“…Although state and trait anxiety are often correlated [20], they appear to have partially different neural correlates [21]. Low family SES has been found to be associated with high trait anxiety, even to the level of developing anxiety disorders [22,23]. A mechanism suggested to underly this association concerns negative effects of a lack of basic resources, such as food, clothing, and medical care, on the development of brain structures (e.g., hippocampus and prefrontal cortex) and their functioning and connectivity.…”