Is fronto-amygdala functional connectivity at rest a neural marker of negative affective reactivity to daily stressors in adolescence?

Heightened affective reactivity is a defining feature of adolescence (Somerville, 2013). While normative, dysregulated responses to everyday stressors can predict the onset and severity of psychopathology (Beauchaine, 2015). Neural accounts often implicate a maturational imbalance in which subcortical affect-generating regions (e.g., the amygdala) develop earlier than the cortical control systems that function to constrain them (Casey et al., 2008). This transition supports two processes: (1) salience detection, involving fronto-insular coupling with the amygdala to prioritize stimuli; and (2) top-down control, supported by prefrontal systems that facilitate the dampening of emotional states (Ochsner & Gross, 2005). Support for this model comes largely from static laboratory paradigms or in-scanner behaviors (Del Piero et al., 2016). However, without testing how intrinsic functional connectivity moderates the relation between stress and affective reactivity in adolescents’ natural environments, our understanding of how neural function shapes responses to stressors in daily life remains theoretical. The present study tests whether resting-state cortico-subcortical connectivity moderates negative affective (NA) reactivity to daily stressors assessed using EMA. Following preliminary behavioral analyses showing that stressor severity was associated with higher NA, our primary aim is to examine whether individual differences in amygdala-cortical connectivity moderate this within-person association.