Subclinical anxiety is associated with reduced self-distancing and enhanced guilt-related connectivity between anterior temporal and subgenual cingulate cortices

Description: The current study investigated neural correlates of reliving autobiographical guilt memories in a sample of subclinically anxious individuals (N = 80). In addition to the traditional whole-brain activity maps, the particular interest of the work lies in assessing the guilt-dependent functional connectivity of the bilateral superior anterior temporal lobes, which are postulated to be the brain loci for the social semantic knowledge. The factors of interest included individual anxiety levels, approach-avoidance motivation towards the guilt memories, as well as their salience. On a different note, in order to gain insights into the involvement of neuromodulatory transmitters in guilt processing, we additionally correlated the average guilt-evoked activity in our sample with the normative regional densities of receptors and transporters belonging to the serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine and oxytocin systems, deriving that information from external PET and post-mortem mRNA gene expression maps. Preprint DOI: 10.1101/2025.09.20.677492.