Dimensional distress and orbitofrontal thickness in anxiety patients.

Thickness of the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) was assessed as it varied with reported symptoms of anxiety and depression in a large sample of anxiety patients. A principal component analysis identified a primary factor of transdiagnostic dimensional distress that predicted 24% of the mOFC variance. Severity of distress symptomology was associated with thinning of the mOFC in both hemispheres for both men and women, regardless of the primary DSM diagnosis. Taken together, the data indicate that mOFC thickness might be useful as an objective measure of disorder severity as well as to assess pharmacological or psychological treatment outcome.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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